PHOTO COURTESY OF GEMINI OBSERVATORY
Three Hilo-area teachers were chosen by the Gemini Observatory to participate in the observatory's "StarTeachers" exchange program in Chile. From left are Gemini staff member Janice Harvey; teachers Kristen Luning, Alicia Hui and Christine Copes; and Gemini staff member Peter Michaud.
HILO >> Big Island teacher Alicia Hui will soon be standing in front of her fifth-grade students at Haili Christian School teaching them about astronomy. Big Isle teachers
reach for the starsThey will give their classes an
astronomy lesson live from ChileBy Rod Thompson
rthompson@starbulletin.comThe twist is that Hui will be standing in the dome of the Gemini South telescope on a mountain top in Chile while her students watch via video conferencing from offices of the Gemini North telescope in Hilo.
With seven hours difference between Hawaii and Chile, Hui will talk from a darkened dome at night, while her students watch during the day in Hilo, said Gemini staffer Janice Harvey.
Hui will share the limelight with two other Hilo-area teachers, Christine Copes from Waiakea Elementary and Kristen Luning from Keaau High.
Gemini named the three last week as the first Big Islanders to go to Chile for two weeks on March 22 in the observatory's "StarTeacher" exchange program.
Three Chilean StarTeachers, Carmen Luz Briones, Viviana Calderon, and Jenny Opazo, will make a corresponding trip to Hilo in October.
A partnership of seven nations, including Chile and the U.S. National Science Foundation, Gemini operates twin telescopes with 26.6-foot diameter mirrors on Mauna Kea and on Cerro Pachon in north-central Chile.
The StarTeacher program, intended to be an ongoing series of scientific, educational, and cultural exchanges for teachers, is an outgrowth of the Sister City relationship established in the mid-1990s between Hilo and La Serena, the coastal Chilean city where Gemini South offices are located.
The exact nature of StarTeachers is a work in progress. "It's really kind of fluid because it's the first time we've ever done it," said Copes.
She wants to tell Chilean students that astronomy is important but must be done in a careful manner, she said.
With the trip to from Hilo to La Serena taking up to 40 hours, Hui compared it to the Polynesian voyages she has studied.
"It is as exciting a voyage as our ancestors took sailing across the Pacific," she told the Chilean teachers during a video conference Tuesday.
All of the Hawaii teachers will take gifts such as macadamia nuts, but Hui will also be bring Alka-Seltzer. She'll be making "Alka-rockets," film canisters that blast into the air powered by Alka-Seltzer fizz.
Gemini Observatory
