Telescopes & Lenses

We started back to school yesterday and one of our fun activities was to put together our Galileoscope which we received earlier this summer.

A couple of weekends ago we went to a state park for a night of games, marshmallow roasting, insect watching, and stargazing. I loved looking through these telescopes. I've only done that a few times before and we got some great views this night. Too bad the Perseid meteor shower was pretty much over!

Here's a photo of Alex roasting marshmallows that night. The whole evening was a lot of fun, though hot!

One of the neatest things abou the Galileoscope, is that you get to put it together YOURSELF!!! So, you can find out how it works! Alex and I enjoyed playing with the lenses and the challenges of putting together the telescope.

When we were done, it worked! Though you can't hold it as Alex is here - every little movement is like an earthquake and everything is very blurry. We actually need a tripod, but when I laid it flat on a table it worked. We haven't used it on the night sky yet - just around the yard - but we will give it a try when it isn't cloudy!

Last night, I gave myself a little refresher course about lenses so I could teach Alex. In this photo, she has one convex lens and one concave lens.


Today, we talked about convergence, divergence, refraction and reflection. We also watched a BrainPop video about telescopes which discussed the differences between reflecting telescopes, which use mirrors, and refracting telescopes, which use lenses. We also used a drop of water on a piece of SaranWrap to imitate a convex lens. Altogether, this has been a great study and I'm trying to decide where to go next with this Rabbit Trail.