Greg Jaehnig (BS'08, Physics & Astronomy) has brought a little piece of Wisconsin and the stars to students in Oshikuku, Namibia.
Jaehnig is serving as a Peace Corps volunteer teaching science and math to students. Together, they've created an after-school science club with an especially Wisconsin flair.
The club assembled a UW-Madison Space Place Galileoscope kit -- the Galileoscope is a small telescope used to view the stars. It is a Wisconsin-based product that has been used by Space Place to encourage people to experience astronomy with their own eyes.
The Galileoscopes were made possible by the Ira and Ineva Baldwin Wisconsin Idea Endowment.
Jaehnig and his students have used the Galileoscope for Friday night star parties where they explore the beautiful Namibian sky.
The little telescope traveled all the way from UW-Madison, where Greg's father -- Kurt Jaehnig (Systems Engineer for the UW-Madison Space Astronomy Laboratory and the Astronomy Department) -- hand-delivered the kit when he visited Greg.
Since 2009 and the International Year of Astronomy, Space Place has distributed hundreds of Galileoscopes in a wide variety of educational settings.
Most of these small telescopes have ended up in the hands of Wisconsin residents, but the Oshikuku Galileoscope wins the prize for having traveled the farthest!