Expert: Paul Wagner - 9/26/2007

Question
sir,
    we are students of IT-BHU, India and our college is going to conduct an astronomy fest this January. but this is the first time that our college is including astronomy as part of its technical fest and we are not sure what all we can include in out fest to make it interesting and noteworthy.
1) from your experience do you know of any other university/ institute or club that has an astronomy fest?
2) can you suggest any event that can make the festival appealing?
3) please suggest some current hot topics for popular lectures and any experts if you know any.
4) also could please suggest a name for our astronomy fest?
thanking you,
vinit

Answer
Dear Vinit

I would start with a couple of specific questions:

1.  What is your goal for this event?  

2.  Who is the target audience?

Knowing those two answers will make your planning much more effective.  (I teach marketing in real life!)

1.  Many, many astronomy schools and clubs have these events.  The most famous is Stellafane, which has a long and rich tradition.  Check them out on the web. You could also check out Sky and Telescope magazine website--they have excellent coverage of these events.

2.  The most appealing things you can do is give people activities that they can participate in.  A solar telescope during the day, for them to observe the sun, is always great, as is a sundial.  Having lots of different telescopes is also good, because people like to get an idea of what they are like, and how they work.  And how much they cost! In the evenings, show people the sky through those telescopes.

3.  Hot topics? I would suggest:  astronomy you can do at home, observing meteors and comets, the latest news from the various planetary explorations by Nasa, identifying the key constellations, the past of future of the universe, and the next ten years: what we hope to learn from our current experiments.

4.  I always like the term Star Party--or perhaps something that really speaks to the bigger picture with humor:  The Secrets of the Universe!

Hope that helps,

Paul Wagner