We have a new member of our stargazing team over here at Rancho Refined + Rugged.  My husband picked up this awesome 6 inch reflector last week on KSL (the Utah equivalent of Craigslist), and we’ve been waiting for an opportune time to take it out for a spin.

I have a 10 inch reflector that I made in High School, but it needs some extra love and attention (read a mirror cleaning and calibration) to be usable. So it’s been great to have this new little telescope for our summer star gazing.

We took our star and constellation viewing activities of last Science Friday and tried out the new telescope in our backyard this week! The boys were ecstatic to be able to use the telescope for the first time. The pictures of the moon were shot by my husband with his iPhone through the telescope lens, and I think they are pretty cool!

Little P also had an exciting breakthrough that night when he sighted his first constellation, Scorpius! Low on the Western horizon, boasting the bright red star Antares on its back. He ran up to me from across the yard, “Mom! Mom! Is that Scorpius?” He asked pointing to the telltale crest of the scorpion’s head in the sky.

“Yes!” Was my amazed reply.

The rest of our little star party was spent looking at the moon from different angels and with different lenses, and adding a few more constellation sightings to our repertoire like Lyra, Cygnus, and Aquila, whose stars Vega, Deneb, and Altair form the Summer Triangle.  It was a really special night for our little family.

If you don’t have a telescope at home, you can look for star parties and star gazing groups in your area. Lots of Universities have small observatories attached to them, or look through your local paper or on the signage at your favorite coffee spot for local Astronomy groups.

Star parties are fun whether you sit in your backyard pointing out constellations, planets, meteor showers, and favorite stars, or join a larger group of amateur astronomers who’ve brought their own telescopes out to share! Above all, have an awesome Science Friday!!!!

XX, Megan

The recipe for this cake came from one of my dearest friends and college roommates. In fact, when dredging up the recipe recently I found an email chain I sent out in 2010 to find out “WHO HAS THE RECIPE TO THAT BUTTERFINGER BANANA CAKE?!?”

Cause, really, this might be my favorite cake of all time! Well, or at least tied with chocolate cake with coconut frosting. One of the reasons I hadn’t made this cake for some time was our second babies severe peanut allergy. We were so careful to clear out all of the peanut related EVERYTHING in our cupboards. I wouldn’t have let Butterfingers come within a mile of his proximity.

Now we have been cleared by his allergist to bring back the peanuts! In fact, at the reintroduction stage we were actually supposed to make sure that he was eating peanuts fairly regularly. Anyway, we whipped this cake up this weekend, and it was basically out of the oven and into our bellies!

When my little friend and I made our cake together, it was a REPEAT. Her most memorable comment was, “That batter kind of looks like barf!” She was right. I could have laughed for days. While the batter may appear less than delicious looking, I assure you that the final product is SO WORTH A TRY!

Moist, candy filled and topped. It really doesn’t get much better than this! You should really give it a whirl this fine Wednesday!

XX, Megan

Ingredients:

1 yellow cake mix (plus ingredients for the mix)
2 bananas, mashed
1 package (fun size) butterfingers, crushed, roughly 10 for the cake and 6 on top
1 container vanilla frosting

Directions:

1. Crush the 10 Butterfingers for the cake mix. Open packages and put them in a dish. Set aside.

2. Mash the banana in the bottom of the bowl you are planning on using to mix your cake. Then prepare cake according to directions on the box.

3. Once you have mixed up the cake mix. Add 10 Butterfingers. Mix well.

4. Pour in greased/floured 9 x 13 or 2 round pans. Bake according to directions on box, though your bake time may be a tiny bit longer. I baked this cake for 35 minutes.

5. Wait until cake cools then frost with Vanilla Frosting and sprinkle on 6 remaining Butterfingers.

6. DEVOUR!!!!

I am not even remotely joking about this step. Devour.

Cannot get enough of these adorable kiddos! Today’s Science Friday was really a combination of four small projects concerning constellations.

We did the following:

1. Connect-the-dots constellation worksheets (from this template).

2. Circled some additional constellations from our star charts (current for this time and season of the night sky, you can get them HERE.)

3. Drew our OWN constellation dot-to-dots from the new constellations we discovered.

4. I hole punched a few constellations on some construction paper and we viewed them on the wall in our dark bathroom with a flashlight!

First, as I already mentioned, I wanted to talk to the littles about constellations this week. While this crew have been known to stay up WAY past their bedtimes on long summer nights, I knew this day wouldn’t be one we could head outside to view the constellations at night.

Instead, I used this template from Kiwi Crate (my printer is out of ink, so I actually just did a free-hand worksheet for each child) and made each child a constellation connect-the-dots paper. See below.

After we all finished connecting the dots on our constellations, we talked about how constellations are groupings of stars that form pictures in the sky. We briefly discussed the ancient Romans and Greeks who gave many of our constellations the names we still use today.

Then I gave each of the children a star chart for the current night sky. They each found the names and groupings of other constellations like Bootes, Pegasus, Cephas, Aquila, and more! We circled the constellations they found on their star charts and talked about some of stories behind them.

When they were finished circling constellations on their star charts I gave them each a piece of black construction paper and some metallic markers so that they could copy the constellations they found for themselves.

Last but not least, I used a star hole punch to make rough representations of some of these same constellations on construction paper and then we went for a star viewing in our dark bathroom. I used a flashlight to light up our constellations!

Such a great sequence of projects. The kids were interested and engaged the entire experience. I was amazed at how excited they were to pick out some of the current constellations in the night sky from their star charts. They happily sounded out the names of multiple constellations and asked about the meaning of the names and the stories behind these night-time specters.

Hope you’re able to try these projects at home with your crew. I’d love to hear how your constellation viewing turns out!!!

XX, Megan

So excited to find and identify new constellations we’re up on the table to examine and explain!

Drawing out some of the new constellations we studied.

Making sure her constellation looks just right!

Miles favorite constellation discovery was Pegasus, which he has personally dubbed THE BIGGEST DIPPER!

He’s not far off, some refer to Pegasus as “The Great Square” because it really does form an enormous square in the sky!

 Super satisfied with his Pegasus 🙂

Showing off their finished dot-to-dots!

These are some of the larger constellations we used for our bathroom viewing!

Our afternoon viewing of Ursa Major and Orion.