MOAS Night Sky Festival

Event Description

Join us at MOAS and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University as we celebrate the wonders of astronomy and the night sky for Florida’s most exciting star party.

Stop by MOAS for our Night Sky Festival as we peer through a wide variety of telescopes set up outside on the front entrance courtyard. The winter sky is in full view as we observe the nearly full Moon, Saturn, Jupiter, the Pleiades, the Orion Nebula, and much more. Throughout the evening, we will be performing live outdoor sky tours with green laser pointers, presenting astronomy programs in the Lohman Planetarium, and conducting hands-on activities around the Museum.

Make sure to also include a trip to the nearby ERAU campus for their Astronomy Open House where you will find telescope tours, astronomy presentations, hands-on demonstrations, and have an opportunity to look through one of the largest publicly accessible telescopes in the southeastern United States. Check ERAU’s website for more information about this event: https://observatory.db.erau.edu.

The outdoor portion of the MOAS Night Sky Festival is free and is weather permitting. Lohman Planetarium shows are free for members, $7.00 per show for non-members, $5.00 for children 17 and under.

Parking is limited. Attendance for the ERAU Guest Speaker is free. Planetarium shows have limited seating and are first-come, first-served.

Schedule:

7:00pm ERAU Guest Speaker, Dr. Sarah Ballard (University of Florida) Click to register online 

"Directions to the Nearest Alien Earth-like Planet"

Astronomers used to hedge at the question of whether the Sun and its system of planets are unusual in the cosmos. The study of exoplanets-- planets around other stars-- is relatively new. State-of-the-art instruments just brush up against the sensitivity to find planets similar to our very own planet Earth. I will summarize findings from the past couple years that contextualize Earth as one potentially habitable, rocky planet among many. However, the environments of these worlds are by-and-large astoundingly different from the conditions that have nourished life here at home.

8:00pm Live "Flight Through the Solar System" Show Click to register online for "Flight Through the Solar System" Show

9:00pm Live "The Sky Tonight" Show Click to register online for "The Sky Tonight"

This program partnership brings together the primary astronomy and space education facilities in the Daytona Beach area, highlighting the ERAU Observatory and MOAS Lohman Planetarium.