Kobe University Newsletter Kaze Vol.10
15/18

Astronomia 14viewing that day. After that we go outside to look at the stars. We have three telescopes and one of them has a large 20cm lens. But you don’t know whether the sky will be clear or not on the day.Urakawa: It really depends on luck. Actually, there have been events where it was too cloudy to see any stars on the day. On these occasions, the children have been happy to listen to our talks about stars and the myths surrounding them. If it is even slightly possible to view constellations, we will set up the telescopes so that we can see dierent stars to the ones we originally planned to show and change our explanations accordingly- we adapt to the situation. For this reason, we check beforehand as a group what stars can be seen during the time period and in what direction. What part do the children most enjoy?Urakawa: The moon and nebula observations are popular. They were very happy when we could see Saturn’s rings. Tamura: The guardians also really enjoy those occasions too. As the club’s PR ocer, I take photos during the viewing events and post them on social media.Giving children a hands-on experience of astronomyAs students of the sciences, why did you choose to join Astronomia instead of the more specialized Astronomy Society?Tamura: Of course, I am interested in constellations but I also wanted to try planning events and creating learning resources. We work together to make the resources for the children to look at. We try to explain things in a fun way by making resources containing photos of constellations and images that make the myths easy to understand. Urakawa: The enduring aims of the Astronomia group involve thinking about ‘How can we capture elementary school children’s interest?’ and ‘How can we explain this in a way that is easy for children to understand?’ with regard to well-known astronomical bodies. There is no division between the humanities and the sciences. The members of the group have various reasons for joining, such as liking stars or liking children, and these dierences also allow us to divide tasks between the group members well. Tamura: In addition to the elementary school events, we also conduct regular viewing events for our group members to allow them to build up experience in operating telescopes. During these events, members can enjoy talking to each other and we have a meal together afterwards. However, over the past year it has been dicult for us to carry out our activities as usual due to the coronavirus situation.Urakawa: Due to the impact of the coronavirus, we have been unable to recruit new students and as a result our membership has decreased by about 10 people. Last year we couldn’t hold any viewing events and it probably won’t be possible to conduct elementary school events this winter.What about online events?Tamura: Recently, we received an oer to collaborate on an online planetarium and night sky viewing event. Urakawa: I think it is necessary for us to move our activities online, however the main appeal of the Astronomia group is that we oer children a real life experience, which involves interacting with the elementary school students in person and giving them the opportunity to actually handle the telescopes. This may not be possible for now, but I think that we will soon be able to hold club members’ only viewing events again. We would like to restart our activities, so if you are interested, please consider joining Astronomia. One of the group’s meetingsMembers of Astronomia

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