GREAT FALLS — While many 12-year-olds spend their afternoons playing video games or watching cartoons, youths at the Great Falls Public Library use that time to investigate the stars.
The library has launched YouthAstroNet, an afterschool program meant to expose young teens to astronomy using genuine scientific equipment. The Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics present the curriculum, which is geared toward youth ages 12 to 15.
Watch the video to learn more about the program:
"We're focusing on teens aged 12 to 15 to give them some hands-on experience with real robotic telescopes used by professional astronomers," said Katherine Altizer, youth services specialist at the Great Falls Public Library.
Through the initiative, students can request telescope photos from observatories affiliated with the Center for Astrophysics. When the photographs are returned, people evaluate and alter them using the same software as professional astronomers.
"The moon, the sun, the Milky Way galaxy, star clusters — those come back, and then the students get to use software like real astronomers or astrophysicists would use to manipulate the photos," said Altizer.
The eight-week program aims to make hard topics like astrophysics more accessible to young students. Students learn how to operate robotic telescopes, improve astronomical photographs, and eventually develop a final project that relates their discoveries to personal stories, literature, or life experiences.
According to Altizer, one of the program's most significant benefits is that it provides a learning environment free of academic pressure.
"Kids have it at school, but that's always connected with grades," she told me. "Bringing it into a grade-free environment lets them be curious. Failure isn’t bad — it’s just, ‘Well, that didn’t work, and now I know something new.’”
YouthAstroNet is free to participate and runs on Tuesdays from 3:45 to 5 p.m., beginning February 3 and concluding March 24. Sessions are held at the Cordingley Room, located in the basement of the library.
"We're getting to use equipment that is not readily available to us in Great Falls — and in Montana in general," Altizer disclosed. "To have access to real robotic telescopes is a really exciting opportunity."
To sign up, or for more information, contact Youth Services Staff at 406-453-0349, ext. 215, or email kaltizer@greatfallslibrary.org.
Click here to visit the AstroNet website, which includes this overview video:
