Tag: mos

Stargazing At MOS

There’s a small, boring backstory: Meghan renewed our membership with the Museum of Science (MOS), then asked me if we should renew it (she asked me via text, so she may have a different order of events).  I said we shouldn’t, since the girls haven’t been interested in going and we basically did not go at all last year — HOWEVER if we were to actually go just once I would be happy to renew while we were on-site.  Despite talking about this all over text, Meghan’s disappointment was evident as she dutifully cancelled the renewal.

I considered my options carefully, as the couch isn’t a particularly comfortable place to sleep, and gently reminded her that the MOS has an observatory that they open on Friday nights to view the stars — therefore it would be open later that night, and I would happily renew while we were there.  All we had to do was get the kids on board with going, or figure out what they would do while the two of us went.  (The girls thought this was a cool idea.  50 points to Gryffindor.)

Saturn
Credit to https://bkellysky.wordpress.com/

A few hours later we found ourselves standing on the roof of the MOS parking garage, waiting for our turn at the telescope.  Sadly, I could not photograph the view from the telescope, but it was a surprisingly clear view of Saturn.  A number of other people have taken photographs that are pretty similar to what we saw.  Happily the docent was informative and happy to answer questions, and didn’t make us feel rushed.  The MOS seems to have crowd management around the telescope down pat.

While we were waiting our turns, we took a few other pictures of Boston and astronomical phenomena, and watched the city bustle around us.

Jupiter and moon
Look to the left and up from the moon, that’s Jupiter. High, thin clouds were moving in, backlighting the view and obscuring the dimmer stars. The photo was taken with my cell phone, apologies for the potato-like quality.

 

Jones Family Outing

The Mystic Jones Clan met us at the Museum of Science today.  They’ve never been, we’re long-time members with a fistful of free passes, and the various cousins love seeing each other, so it was a date.

We planned to meet at the museum, but our first hurdle was knowing what time they would arrive — it’s a 90 minute drive for them, but only 20 minutes for us.  We made a rough guess on when to leave, and happened to get into the parking garage two cars before they did.  The museum garage was full, so we both wound up in overflow parking around the corner at the Galleria Mall.

lightning exhibitThe MOS is the MOS, which means we all had a good time.  Half of us got to see the electricity show, half chose to play in the animal displays.  We all got to play in the hands-on bits in the ‘models’ exhibit.

The youngest cousin is not quite six, so we finished with the museum after not too long.  He had fun monkeying around in the Discovery Center for a while, but even that’s not enough for a six year old to last all day.

Meghan and Mu
Meghan kept little Mu busy and entertained. When he snuggled up in a sleepy-little-kid pose we had a collective realization that he’s tired.

We wandered back to the mall to grab a little food and figure out dinner.  A mall-wide fire alarm kept us outside for a bit, but eventually the fire department showed up and disabled it — false alarm.  We considered our options while running around Newbury Comics and settled on an early dinner at P. F. Chang’s – right outside the mall.

The food was excellent, the service was terrible, the kids were acceptable.  Meghan got in some little boy time, giving Katie a break.

As the sun went down, some flurries kicked up as a fresh storm prepared to roll in overnight.  The Mystic Joneses had a long drive home so we all packed up and headed out.

lighting show
The Lighting Show in the Theater of Electricity, at the Boston Museum of Science. Meghan thinks the bolt looks like a dancer.