If You Want to Throw a Star Party, Part 4: Day of Destiny

If you look closely, you can see an astronaut!

I had way too much zooming around in my brain on the day of our Star Party. Luckily, Julia was there corralling volunteers and giving them tasks. I definitely recommend having at least one staff member to do this on the day of your event, unless you’re very, very organized (a state of being I can only aspire to). We had three phases of volunteer help: a morning shift for prep work, an afternoon shift for setup, and an evening shift for the actual event. In the morning, 3 volunteers were busy cutting out last minute things and preparing snacks. In the afternoon, 10 volunteers made a few signs for the event, mapped out the solar system on the floor (to scale!), and set up tables where we needed them.  During the event, 10 volunteers helped check people in and guided the flow. They helped out with the photo booth station to take photos, at the moon flipbook station, and one held an ipad with a constellation viewing app.

I found these awesome bulletin board pieces stashed away at Collier,
and they gave me the inspiration to map out the solar system on the floor.
The planets were not to scale but the distances between them were.

You can calculate a scaled solar system with this super-handy website. I found it worked best to measure the distance I had to work with and scale Pluto from there. Volunteers on the afternoon of the event measured out the distances, stuck the planets down, and created fact sheets to place on the floor next to each planet.

I did the planetarium show 3 times and the astronaut spoke 3 times, each at 6:15, 6:45, and 7:15. That way, people could do both things and still have time to do the crafts and other activities. We did end up ticketing the planetarium since only a limited number of people can fit inside at a time (people got tickets as they came in to the library).

As I mentioned, the planetarium was in the meeting room, along with the snacks. The astronaut was in the kids room, and the photo booth was in the teen room. Crafts, tattoos, and ipad station were in the hallway. I covered our Crayola Kiosk for the night with a queen-sized sheet; it worked great. Several unattached adults participated and had fun, but we made sure to leave the adult area of the library alone in case anyone did not want to attend the Star Party.

Our brave and intrepid Ashley working nonstop at the nebula jar table making

galactic dreams come true. Big thanks also to Melinda Campbell for her jar assistance.

Many thanks to Sara Pope for attending and taking these photos! She even chipped in at the nebula jar table and with clean up!
The Star Party was so, so much fun. A lot of our regulars came out, and lots of people I hadn’t met before! Everyone had a pretty good time and it was totally worth all the effort and panic dreams.

This concludes my series on throwing a Star Party! Thanks for the comments and questions, everyone! Feel free to contact me if you ever have any questions, and let me know if any of these ideas work/don’t work for you!

- Angela @ COL