As part of her interests in science and space, Rebecca Jolitz has used her telescope to outreach to other girls interested in astronomy.

Rebecca Jolitz, a student at Loma Prieta Elementary School, demonstrated proper telescope usage to California middle school girls at Stanford University's Tech Trek in June 2004, using her own Celestron C-5 Schmidt-Cassagrain telescope. Rebecca has been fascinated with astronomy and physics "ever since I was little".

Suffice to say, Rebecca says she would like to major in astrophysics at Berkeley, the university where her mother received her degree in physics, and loves to attend Cal Day every year. She regularly attends lectures on astronomy here in Silicon Valley, home of NASA Ames.

The 125 13-year-old girls attending Tech Trek Science Camp for Girls are selected by their school for attendance at this special camp geared to encourage the best and brightest girls to study science and engineering. The camp is sponsored by the American Association of University Women and held yearly.

As part of a series of lectures entitled "Girls Just Want to Have Astro Fun" by Lynne Greer Jolitz , Chief Technology Officer of ExecProducer and Berkeley physics alumna. Rebecca brought her Celestron C-5 Schmidt-Cassagrain telescope and demonstrated how such a telescope with equitorial mount is aligned on Polaris and used to find objects in the sky, what declination and azimuth means in practice using the telescope, how objects are acquired, and what types of eyepieces are best for planets, resolving double stars like Alberio, and finding deep sky objects. Alberio, which looks like a single star to the unaided eye, resolves with her telescope into a brilliant blue and gold double star. Alberio is one of Rebecca's favorite objects to find in the night sky - one she calls the "Cal Star" since blue and gold are Berkeley's university colors.

Rebecca is easily three years younger than her audience, but seeing an elementary school girl easily handle the telescope impressed and emboldened these young middle school scientists in training. After Rebecca demonstrated many elements of the telescope, volunteers in the audience also took a shot at working the telescope. Women in science often do not acquire the casual training in instruments that men receive, often because boys are just expected to make things work while girls are expected to wait for instruction. It is hoped that demonstrating competence in a scientific instrument and allowing for error will encourage these girls to take a more hands-on approach to science.

See also "Lynne's Take on Tech - Girls Just Want to Have Astro Fun - Teaching hot topics in astronomy and physics at Stanford Tech Trek for Girls " .