Students in Cork, Ireland interacting live via Skype with Chabot
during real-time observing session.What do Chabot's 36-inch telescope, Nellie, and a classroom full of 14-year-old girls in Cork, Ireland have in common? In a few words, the International Year of Astronomy and the Web of Stars!
Wednesday morning around 1:00 AM, Chabot staff astronomer Conrad Jung and I fired up the systems in the 36-inch observatory and made a Skype video call to the Blackrock Castle Observatory in Cork, Ireland. Staffers Frances McCarthy and Alan Giltinan answered—it was 9:00 AM for them, and Frances had already been up four hours to prepare for our premiere session of Web of Stars. A bus-load of girls from a local school were on their way through the downpours of rain Cork was experiencing at the time.
On our end, everything technological was working fine: Nellie, our 36-inch telescope, was stoked, motors humming and ready to drive us to faraway celestial locales; computers were singing (in their own particular way), and the webcam-Skype interlink was green. The webcam view nicely framed the telescope, making a great background for the session.
A little after 2:00 AM PDT, the girls from North Presentation Secondary School rolled into the classroom, and there was a great deal of excitement. Eight or nine of them immediately descended upon the microphone and webcam and started chirping "helloes" and "hi's" at us across the 5,000 mile gulf (what's an ocean and a continent to get in the way of the Internet?).
After the greeting buzz died down, and the girls' teacher and the facilitators at Blackrock Castle got them to their computer stations, the morning's work began….