Youth Capture the Colorful Cosmos
The Abbe Museum, in affiliation with the Smithsonian Institution, is pleased to announce its participation in the Youth Capture the Colorful Cosmos II (YCCC II) program. This online exhibit, a partnership with the Indian Township School, is a preview of the full exhibition that will be displayed at the Abbe Museum in September of 2015 during the Acadia Night Sky Festival. The full exhibition will include students from other Wabanaki communities, and promote increased interest, awareness, and knowledge of astronomy content and Wabanaki oral histories. For the initial online exhibit, students focused mainly on two Passamaquoddy Stories: Of the Surprising and Singular Adventures of Two Water Fairies Who Were Also Weasels, and How They Each Became the Bride of a Star, and Possesomuwinuwok: The Star People.
By partnering with schools in the Wabanaki communities, students have the opportunity to research, learn about, and photograph the cosmos using telescopes owned and maintained by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
The goal of the YCCC II program is to use hands-on exercises to teach youth how to control the MicroObservatory robotic telescopes over the internet and take their own images of the universe. By encouraging students to choose subjects based on Wabanaki stories about the stars, each student has the opportunity to research traditional stories and interpret them in a modern context using 21st century technology.