What is planet? what is the nearest star from us? Why an eclipse occur? What will happen when eclipse occur? Why it wasn’t save for us to watch solar eclipse directly? Those are questions from people who want to know more about astronomy.. or people who never know astronomy before. And those are several question asked by people in Trimukti village, Karang Rejo District, Lampung when we visited them last Monday.

January 26th was not only an eclipse day for us in langitselatan. We went to Lampung to watch the eclipse and share knowledge about astronomy for students, teachers and local society. One of the local societies were Trimukti Village, a small village outside Bandar Lampung city. It’s about 2,5 hours trip from our Hotel in Lampung. Quiet far and the road were really bad. We must passed a long rubber tree plantation with 10km/hours speed. It was an off road trip I guess.. .

Well.. we arrived in Trimukti village at 9.30 am, and the children were waiting for us since 7 am. Oh noo…. so we started to teach them about astronomy. There were about 20-25 children from 3 - 12 years old. And not just that their parents, teachers and local people were gathered in the church to know more about astronomy. We teach them about solar system, earth, solar eclipse, how to use telescope and how to observe solar eclipse safely. It was great to see their enthusiast. Most of them never know about solar system or eclipse before. So this session really help to build awareness on astronomy and the universe itself.  But we also found several children were knowledgeable about basic information of solar system.

After astronomy teaching, we also gave them chances to learn how to use telescope and observing the sun. People were exciting when they could see the sun through sunglasses. And the children were exciting to try You are Galileo telescope to see distant object.  Before we went back to Lampung University for solar eclipse observation we gave 5 sunglasses with solar filter to the local authority and we also gave solar system poster, astronomy games and books. We do hope they could use them for science teaching in elementary school or kinder garden.

According to Rev. Daniel, Trimukti is a new area .. so there are many things to do in the future to develop this area. Most of the local people are farmer and they once lost their land because it was taken by the old regime. They got their land back not long after the reformation era in Indonesia. But it still not a happy ending for them, cause once again the government want to take their land as an international airport.  After sometime now they could be the landlord for their land again. Beside that, there are a rubber tree plantation nearby (±7km), and some people work there for living.

Another thing that impressed me much was the hospitality of the people in Trimukti Village. When we came they provide us with breakfast and lunch.. and gave us their crop field as a gift. In big city like Bandung or Jakarta, hospitality like this are rarity.

Although we couldn’t accompany local people in Trimukti Village to watch annular solar eclipse, they still enjoy the event with the eclipse glasses we left there.

Tags: astronomy, awareness building, eclipse, remote area, solar eclipse

This entry was posted on Friday, January 30th, 2009 at 11:30 pm and is filed under communicating. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.