BIg Bang to Black Holes

This week I'm at McDonald Observatory in the Davis mountains of west Texas co-facilitating a workshop on cosmology for grade 8-12 teachers.  The group of energtic teachers comes mainly from schools across Texas, but also from Florida, Oklahoma, Arizona, and California.  During out first day, we built Galileoscopes and then used them under fantastic clear and dark skies.  We also used some reflecting telescopes that collected more light than the 0.05-m refractor Galileoscope...these had mirrors from 0.1 to 0.55 m.  As part of the workshop, the group tours the professional telescopes. Last night, it was the 2.7-m Harlan J. Smith telescope. Today, the 9.2-m Hobby-Eberly telescope where they will learn about the Dark Energy research program. We are grateful to NASA and to supporters of the McDonald Observatory endowments for Education that make our summer workshops possible, and we look forward to sharing many of the activities with other  teachers at CAST in November.