Went to
http://www.geaugaparkdistrict.org/pa...torypark.shtml last night to watch. Very enjoyable time!
If anybody is in the area (the USS Cod is local, so you just might be), this park is definitely worth checking out!
Quote:
|
Observatory Park has numerous site features and signage, a mile-long Planetary Trail with interactive pods representing each planet, a Weather Trail with interactive stations representing ways to study weather, life-sized corner stones of the Great Pyramid of Giza, earthern mounds, henge stones, an entrance drive and parking lot, and woodland trails connecting the main campus with the soon-to-be-renovated Nassau Astronomical Observing Station
|
The planetary trail was very neat, especially for a five year old with a keen interest in the planets right now (She knows them in order, most of the time
). She did fine up till Jupiter, and then seeing (well not seeing, it was dark, but the full moon made it bright enough you could see the next planet on the trail) that she couldn't even see Saturn, we turned back to the start. It's a mile or so, with large areas representing each planet. They are placed out to scale, so you get to Earth within a few hundred yards, the asteroid belt is large boulder field, and then Jupiter. The rest of the planets are too far out to walk at night. (Pluto is there, but it's just a small rock at the end of the trail, with the obvious caveats).
There is also a full size 'model' of the great Pyramid of Giza. They have 20 foot high corner stones at each corner, aligned just like the real one, so you can do some observations off of it. IN the pic above, you can see one of the stones, the next one is along the tree line, that's how big the real thing is! There is also a henge of some sort, but I haven't figured out how it is aligned yet.
They also have an observatory with a bunch of portable telescopes and a few big ones, I think the biggest is a 48". They did a presentation in the onsite planetarium about the eclipse. The ranger that gave the talk was way over enthused about the topic, which is a good thing.
There were probably 3000 people there, but we only saw 50 or so at a time, but it wasn't crowded, just busy. And it was free!
Kudos to Geauga Park district for putting on a good show, wish they could have had clear skies all night though. We did get to see the moon enter totality though, which the little was amazed at.