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September 21st, 2014 2:00 pm by Matthew Lane

KINGSPORT -- Bays Mountain Park's astronomy club is holding its annual StarFest convention next month, featuring keynote speakers, planetarium programs, a solar viewing and the chance to spend the night in the park.

Planetarium Director Adam Thanz said the event is one of the finest astronomy events in the nation.

The 31st annual StarFest will run Oct. 17 to Oct. 19 and the deadline to register for the event is this Friday, Sept. 26. Thanz is reminding people who may want to attend StarFest that no walk-ups will be allowed on the day of the event and people must pre-register and pay by the end of the week.

Registration is $90 per person; full time students and people under 21 the cost is $80. Thanz said the fee includes access to all of the speakers, activities, five meals, the park's public programs (wildlife exhibits, planetarium shows, barge rides and trails), the opportunity to sleep/camp on the park grounds and a commemorative T-shirt.

The theme of this year's event is "Seeing the Sky" with a focus on how people see the sky differently, through art, literature, science and music.

On Friday night, Mark Littmann will present a dramatic reading in the planetarium theater of the play "Little Lessons for Lina" that tells the true story of Caroline Herschel -- the first woman to be a professional astronomer - and her older brother William, who discovered the planet Uranus, infrared radiation, our position in the Milky Way and more.

Littmann is the Hill Chair of Excellence Professorship in Science Writing at the University of Tennessee. He holds a doctorate in English from Northwestern University, has taught astronomy at six universities and written/produced 35 planetarium programs.

On Saturday morning, Littman returns with "Seeing the Sky Through Words," a program on the various writers through the ages and their efforts to describe the sky and celestial bodies -- the craters on the Moon, Saturn and its rings and a total eclipse of the Sun.

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Astronomy club offers Starfest at Bays Mountain