It was a night for children and parents to make memories looking at the planets from a telescope, and for students to explore dozens of technological exhibits during College of the Canyons’ Star Party.

As the sun set in the hills beyond the college’s Canyon Country campus, a crowd formed, eager for the stars and planets to arise in the night sky.

“We’ve seen the stars every day from the ground, but we’ve never seen closer, and get the knowledge about all these stars and constellations,” said Chang Fang, who had lifted her child to look through a telescope’s eyepiece at Jupiter.

“It’s a good opportunity for her to get exposed,” Fang said. “to see how far those stars are and what the galaxy would look like.”

Whether students came for extra credit or out of sheer curiosity, they walked through a gala of budding scientists and engineers.

“You get to work with 3D models and design much more complicated systems than you would in a classroom,” said Brandon Gelfand, the project manager for RockSat-X, as he sat displaying a payload deck to passersby.

Organizations RockSat-X and HASP are developing technologies to be sent into space on a NASA rocket.

“It’s a really nice way of learning and experiencing what it would be like to work on a legitimate NASA project,” Gelfand said.

Additionally, a scientist from Jet Propulsion Laboratories spoke about discovering planets outside of our solar system.

“I get to talk about how we find planets around other stars, how we discover black holes in other galaxies,” said Vanessa Bailey, the staff scientist who spoke.

“All of the things that got me interested in astronomy to begin with, I get to tell everybody else about,” Bailey said. “(I) help get other people and other young students as excited about astronomy as I am.”

Bailey admired the diversity of the crowd and how their curiosity contributed to her presentation.

“One of the things that I was really pleased to see when I looked out at the audience tonight was how many different types of people there were,” said Bailey. “ I think one of the things that we need to be working on as an astronomy community, and as a scientific community, in general, is making science inclusive and welcoming to everybody.”

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