Hoovers Y.E.A (Youth Enjoying Astronomy) club hosted an astronomy fair at Toll Middle School on Thursday, March 13. Eric Robinson, Leo Abedi, and Candela Capdevilla hosted the event, which was held for middle schoolers who wanted to learn more about astronomy. The topics included Constellations, Moon Tides, Gravity Waves, the Drake Equation, Black Holes, Meteors, the Star Life Cycle, and Dark Matter.

Hoover students Leo Abedi and Candela Capdevilla came up with the idea to host this fair for the middle schoolers to “Introduce them to astronomy and give them a crash course before they enter high school,” according to Leo Abedi. 

“I brought the solar telescope, helped come up with some of the ideas in terms of what to do with the grant money, and answered student questions during the event,” said Eric Robinson, the club advisor also known as Mr. Robinson.

However, during the event, things took a turn, and a different approach became required.

“All of the students went up to the telescope and tried to look through it, but the Unistellar eVScope doesn’t have a physical eyepiece; it sends the visual directly to a smart device. Despite this fact, the kids had a lot of fun looking at the current surface of the sun and asking about why it has random black spots, called sunspots,” said Mr. Robinson. 

This is not the last event that will take place. “This is going to become a traveling roadshow where we visit the elementary and middle schools in the district to put on a similar show.  We’re also developing the club into a CalTech research partnership.  We have a club advisor from CalTech and are working on obtaining the hardware to create a local Linux cluster to analyze astronomical data.”

We encourage you to go and congratulate our amazing students and Mr. Robinson for putting on this amazing event!