Astrofest and Eclipse 2012

Mom and Amanda are interested in astronomy. They've gone stargazing together, and Mom was out with a pinhole viewer back in 1994 the last time an eclipse was visible in her neighborhood. So, they were both excited not only to hear about the annular eclipse in May, but also about a chance to get some viewing glasses at the BYU Astrofest. The event took place at the Eyring Science Center. Amanda had been there with her class on a field trip just the week before, and she was excited to point out the science "toys" all around, like this tornado maker:

One of the activities at Astrofest was rocket launching, using high pressure air. But first, the kids had to make their own paper rockets. They all worked on one at least to some extent. In the end, Jared's probably got in the most flight time, but it also disappeared after its final flight. Curtis's seemed to be the most durable.

Another big attraction was "astronaut training," a.k.a. bouncy houses. The lines weren't bad at all, especially for the smaller of the two houses, which the older three Muffins spent quite a bit of time in.

Our plans to get eclipse glasses were foiled by a nasty technicality: the line to get them went on the stairs, and we had two strollers in tow. The Muffins were disappointed, especially Amanda and Jared, but Mom took them all to Jamba Juice before we left campus. It seemed to help cheer them up a little.

So, what did we do without eclipse glasses? First, we tried the good ol' pinhole viewer method. After much wiggling of cardboard, we got it to work! However, Mom decided to try going one step better: the digital camera. It could only register the "moon dot" in the sun on video setting, and so we present this brief video as our souvenir of the 2012 annular eclipse (not exactly National Geographic material perhaps, but still fun for us).