Stuart Schwartzel (12) talks about the ‘how to’ with cataloging stars. He spoke about different methods used to cataloging stars and he showed examples of the different names one star can have. “There’s numerous different ways to catalogue stars. The first ones you see are alphanumeric designations, among others,” Schwartzel said.

Calvin Chang (12) speaks about comets and their sizes as they travel through space. He spoke about different types of comets and the ones that have been seen for the longest periods of time. “The meeting was a pretty standard meeting. Other than being really cool, they actually are really big. The part you see is actually larger than Jupiter at times and can be really really long because it’s a huge dust ball,” Chang said.

Zain Hafeez (12) talks about lightweight sails that could be potentially shot in space. He talked about further progress with these rockets in the presentation. “I talked about this space project that’s a solar sail that can travel at 20% the speed of light. The nearest solar system to us is about four light years away so it would get there in 20 years. This project is being developed over the next decade,” Hafeez said.

Marilyn Kealey (8) and Skylar Schwartzel (8) sit and listen to the astronomy presentation. They learned about comet size and cataloging stars. “We usually talk about if new ones are discovered and what’s so important about them if they are discovered,” Kealey said.

Skylar Schwartzel (8) and Clara Whitcomb (1) illustrate penguins Mr. Whitcomb’s whiteboard. They drew many penguins before the club meeting began in order to pass the time. “At the last meeting, we watched a video talking about stars and physics. It was pretty educational. I’m excited to see what we do for this meeting,” Schwartzel said.