The 16th annual Astronomy at the beach was hosted this past Saturday (9/22).  It was hosted by Kensington Metropark and the Great Lakes Association of Astronomy Clubs (GLAAC). It was fun and exciting. At Kensingston park hundreds of people gathered to come out and participate. There were telescopes lined up all around the lake, there were 3D presentations, and there was a keynote speaker. 

Let me start by saying that even though it was an extremely cold outside and that it is totally probably that I caught a cold during that night......It was all worth it.  The speaker was an astronaut. A real astronaut.  He came in wearing a blue NASA jump suit and I even got to shake his hand!!!!

The keynote speaker was Dr. Andrew J. Feustel.  He is a geophysicist from Lake Orion, Michigan.  He went to Oakland Community College and Purdue University. He participated in two NASA missions in 2006 and 2009. Both times his family could not see him land. The first time was because the weather conditions didn't permit it and the second was because it was night when the space shuttle landed.  Feutsel spoke about both his missions and he showed video of himself and the space ship crews in space. I have to say that the videos they made, made space travel look sooooo fun! I guess the fun of making the videos made up for the intense raining he had to do in order to get ready for the missions.  Also he told us that he and his crew members assembled the final parts of the international space station and all i could think of was wow I shook hands with someone that will go down in history!

Here is a picture of Dr. Andrew Feutsel, he was the perfect speaker for Astronomy at the beach and he made a cold night awesome. Google him for more information or use this link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_J._Feustel. He seemed like a pretty awesome guy.