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NEILLSVILLE KIDS LOOKING UP
Friday, January 15th, 2010 -- 2:04 pm
Posted by Riley Hebert-News Director
Neillsville students are doing some mid-day stargazing this week.
StarLab is a mini-planetarium. It’s like a huge tent. Air pressure puffs it up so full classes can learn about the night sky.
The kids crawl through a little tunnel into an open area, the lights go out and teacher Don Abel launches into a grade-appropriate lesson about stars, constellations and their origins.
The projector is motorized, so it can replicate the spinning of the Earth; kids can see stars appear and set – of course, one star doesn’t move.
"There's our North Star," Abel pointed out to Mrs. Neville’s 5th graders Friday morning. "What if you were Christopher Columbus, and you were sailing across the ocean, and you saw every night you sailed, that star was getting higher and higher in the night sky. That would tell you were going north."
There were plenty of “oooos and ahhhhhs” and even a few "awesomes!!", but, for the most part, the kids were entranced by the experience.
"We get it twice a year. I've been doing this for fifteen or 20 years," Abel says. "They tell me 'it's the highlight of the year'."
StarLab is set up in the Middle School Pit.
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