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

If You Want to Throw a Star Party, Part 3: 1 month out

The LPI campus is beautiful! I highly recommend checking out the library while you’re there, too.

Annnnd we’re back, with part 3 of the Star Party plan.

At T-minus 1 month to Star Party, I went to the Lunar and Planetary Institute to pick up the Molten Moon display, and put it out in our lobby. It was really cool to watch people of all colors, backgrounds, and ages pause to read it. I love museums, and part of what I loved about Star Party was that it brought a museum-type experience to our customers for free. Many of the people who enjoyed the LPI exhibit were not people who came to Star Party, but at least they got to participate in a small way! And when I did see families stopping to read it, it was the perfect opportunity to invite them to the party.

In the children’s area, Agnes the super intern put up the beautiful display she had made, and I put out space books.

I also created invitations to hand to customers. Full disclosure: these were not communications-approved, but they were very effective. They were star-shaped! So kudos to the volunteers who cut them out. I know that those stars did a lot for spreading the word within our branch.

 I printed out the black and white image on yellow construction paper.

Also at one month, I started my passive program. Funny story: I don’t think any of the kids who did Star Search actually came to the Star Party, but they sure had fun solving the clues. It was still summer, so it was nice to have something for the older kids to do in the children’s area.

At this point on the timeline, you should also be prepping your crafts. Asking the youth list for baby food jars if you need them, piling up your craft fluff, etc*. I printed out the phases of the moon flipbooks on cardstock and had a wonderful volunteer chop them up with our paper chopper and punch holes so that all the kids had to do was put them in order and tie them with string.

Sometime in the month preceding your program, you will go to LPI to pick up the planetarium and get trained on it. The education lead at LPI will walk you through how to set up the planetarium, and give you a sample spiel. Inside the planetarium you will set up a projector. This consists of a light bulb with 2 film canisters that fit around it to project star images on the inside of the dome. There are 2 canisters: 1 that has constellation drawings, and one that is just stars.
Fun fact! The constellation drawings come from H.A. Rey’s book Stars: a New Way to See Them

I had no idea that the creator of Curious George was also an astronomer! This book is fantastic (don’t worry, it’s been updated since its original publication in 1952), and I used it extensively to prepare for my planetarium shows. I’m going to be honest and tell you that I did most of my studying the night before. You don’t have to be an expert to lead planetarium shows, but it does help to have some familiarity with what you’re looking at!
If you decide to throw a star party, let me know and I can share my spiel with you.

*I forgot to say in my 4-months-out post that that is when you really want to order any supplies that you will need but don’t have. For instance, if you want to give away cosmic stickers or give people star tattoos**, or if you want a specific kind of jar for your nebulas, or you need cardstock for flipbooks. You can use some of your $200 to buy these supplies and/or cool space-themed items. Oriental Trading even has a pretty cool astronaut dress-up helmet for just 6.99!

**getting a little David Foster Wallace-y here with my footnotes, but these are the star tattoos that we used :)

If You Want to Throw a Star Party, Part 2: 2 months out

I would be remiss if I left out at this juncture the fact that Star Party was so, so far from a one-woman job. It was really a team effort, and I would like to say a big “thank you!” to the whole Collier staff. My manager Julia did a lot and thought of many things that I would not have. Regular volunteers at our branch and our amazing summer intern helped immensely with preparations.

To request volunteers for the day of the event, Julia contacted Andrea Lawrence through the Volunteer Request form: Intranet->Community Engagement->side bar->Volunteer Request.  She requested volunteers for the day of, to help with final preparations (decorating, last-minute craft prep, snack prep, setup), as well as during the event (manning tables, ensuring smooth flow, assisting participants, clean-up).

At this time, I started prepping the display that would go in the kids area. I wanted it to go up one month before the star party, to generate space excitement and provide an opportunity for telling people about it. I started putting books on hold, and decided what I wanted my display to look like: starry background, moon, Stephen Hawking quote. Collier’s summer intern, Agnes, really did an awesome job putting it together.

Materials: foam core board (special order through NL Admin), black butcher paper from Create HPL, Cricut-cut letters, die-cut stars, glitter paint

Our whole branch got into it, and Cyrano put up a space-themed display in the adult area, too!

Two months out, I created a passive program, a “Star Search” treasure hunt through the library. If you’re interested I can share it with you.

At this time, you should also decide what all you want to have: photo booth, snacks, crafts, etc. We decided we wanted a photo booth with props, so Agnes and volunteers started working on those at around this time (Agnes made the totally bomb astronaut helmets). We chose our crafts: galaxy jars (http://www.momdot.com/diy-nebula-jar-instructions/) and phases of the moon flip books (http://deceptivelyeducational.blogspot.com/2014/11/phases-of-moon-flip-book_21.html).

Stay tuned for the next blog post, in which I learn that in order to give a planetarium talk, I actually have to learn some astronomy!

- Angela

If You Want to Throw a Star Party, Part 1 - Approximately 4 months out

Star Party!

The idea for the Star Party came out of the exhibit hall at TLA. The Lunar and Planetary Institute had their portable planetarium set up and my manager Julia and I went in and thought it was really awesome. We wanted to do the event at the end of SRP (it fit so well with this year’s theme!) but the planetarium was not available until the end of August. FYI- I made first contact with LPI in April after TLA and had the planetarium scheduled for our Star Party date in early May. The planetarium gets a lot of use from schools and other organizations, so you have to be flexible with your date until you get your reservation nailed down.

The email address to use for reserving the planetarium is: Education@lpi.usra.edu

Disclaimer: The planetarium is pretty big. I’m sorry I don’t have a picture! It took up most of Collier’s meeting room. So you will need some serious space (on the order of at least 11 feet of ceiling height, and about 21 feet by 21 feet floor space). This very dry YouTube video should give you an idea.

This is all the parts of the planetarium that will have to fit in your car.
I’m in there for scale.

I also noticed on their website that LPI loans exhibits to libraries, and I thought that setting one up in the foyer for the month leading up to the Star Party would be a cool way to tell people about it. Once I had the date set for the Planetarium, I requested the Molten Moon exhibit with LPI’s online request form: http://www.lpi.usra.edu/exploration/education/exhibits/.

When you request it, you’ll want to set the return date as a few days after your Star Party. You can return it along with the planetarium. It is a lot of stuff to have in your car all at once, but I have a little Corolla and it all fit.

The exhibit in transport mode.

The exhibit in display mode.

At around this time, I also looked into borrowing artifacts from NASA, but there were lots of shipping charges and some insurance requirements and I gave up. If you are interested in trying to book an astronaut to speak at your event, the request information can be found here: http://www.nasa.gov/about/speakers/astronautappearances.html.

They require a written request with very detailed instructions and the request must come no more than 6 months in advance and no less than 6 weeks in advance. So I would consult with programming and submit the request when you have your date set. I have to say that the planetarium itself is pretty cool and I would not have requested an astronaut speaker officially but I happen to know one personally and he happened to be free.

- Angela Barrett