UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The Penn State Eberly College of Science’s popular AstroFest program, a longtime outreach of the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, will celebrate its 25th anniversary this year, welcoming visitors to Davey Laboratory from Wednesday, July 10, through Saturday, July 13. The four-night festival of astronomy activities and stargazing will run from 8:30 to 11:30 p.m. each night during the 2024 Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts.
AstroFest will offer visitors of all ages a variety of fun and educational activities. The public is encouraged to come enjoy the night sky and celebrate the 25th anniversary of AstroFest at Davey Lab, located across from the HUB-Robeson Center on the Penn State University Park campus. Events are free and will occur rain or shine, both in classrooms and in the planetarium on the fifth floor of Davey Lab.
In the Davey Lab lobby, visitors can pick up their printed AstroFest program, which can be stamped at the evening’s activities and then returned at the end of the night for science-themed prizes. During the first half of each night, activities for kids will take place that are sure to be a hit.
This year’s program will be bringing back beloved activities, such as the oobleck kiddie pool, as well as introduce new, timely activities and information, such as a talk on the upcoming rare nova explosion in the T Coronae Borealis.
“T Corona Borealis (or T Cor Bor), is a symbiotic recurrent nova. The last time the white dwarf in this system underwent an outburst was almost 80 years ago, a few months after the end of World War II,” said Suvrath Mahadevan, Verne M. Willaman Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics. “Astronomers believe that the next eruption is imminent and could happen any day now. When this happens, this system will get as bright as second or third magnitude and will easily be visible to the naked eye for a few days. I will be giving a talk at AstroFest describing this system, the history of novae, and how modern instruments, including Penn State-built spectrometers like HPF and NEID, are poised to observe this explosion.”
On clear nights, visitors will be able to use the rooftop observatory telescopes — including a brand-new instrument donated by Howard Schlegel, a 1971 alumnus with dual bachelor of science degrees in forest sciences and zoology — to see up-close views of the moon, star clusters and glowing remnants of stellar death.
Inside the planetarium, a new projector funded by endowments from from Dr. Larry Travis and Ronald and Susan Friedman will elevate visitors’ experiences.
"We can give people a live tour of the sky with imagery and animation beyond anything we have been able to show before,” said Teaching Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics Chris Palma. “The planetarium show is one of our most popular events throughout the year, and we’re really looking forward to wowing viewers at AstroFest with our new-and-improved capabilities.”
The first AstroFest program, held in 1999, was the brainchild of three then-undergraduate students: Karen Knierman, Jane Rigby and Nahks Tr’Ehnl. Since that first year, the event has drawn between 1,500 and 2,300 people per year. Over time, that amounts to more than 45,000 community members who have been impacted by this outreach program.
Tr’Ehnl, now an instructional technology specialist in the department, still leads organization of the event today, along with Palma, Assistant Teaching Professor Michael Pagano, and Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics Jane Charlton.
Knierman is an assistant teaching professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University, and Rigby is an astrophysicist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and the senior project scientist for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the most powerful telescope ever built. Rigby was recently awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
“We’re absolutely thrilled to be celebrating 25 years of this impactful community outreach program,” said Randy McEntaffer, head of the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics. “This longstanding event is a prime example of the innovative and collaborative approach to research, teaching and outreach that our faculty, staff and students embody. Turning people on to the wonders of the universe is incredibly rewarding for us, and we hope it inspires them to continue to explore their curiosity through science and beyond.”
More information is available on the AstroFest website or by contacting the Penn State Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics by phone at 814-865-0418 between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. or by email at planetarium@astro.psu.edu.