Greetings!
 
I hope you are doing well. It’s finally November, which means Thanksgiving is right around the corner. While it is still a few weeks away, we wanted to make sure you know that we are super thankful for your generous donation, and that we have finally acquired our brand-new planetarium!
 
Throughout this last year and a half of the global pandemic, Space Hogs was able to use the momentum that this campaign provided to gather the remaining funds for the planetarium. Through additional individual donors, a generous grant from the University of Arkansas Women’s Giving Circle, and final funding from the Physics Department, we purchased the planetarium over the summer and it was delivered in October!
 
We have tested the new setup and begun preparing for our first shows. The leap in technology truly redefines what we can accomplish, taking us from two outdated images to countless star maps and beautiful color projections. I have included just a few images of the setup to give you an idea of the improvements that your donation has provided.
 
Thank you so much for getting this campaign off the ground; you proved that people truly value science education and want to reinvest in our community, and we are incredibly grateful for that.
 
We will now begin contacting all donors who donated at certain levels regarding the opening show of our planetarium, and how our donors would like to be displayed on the planetarium’s donor page. We hope you have a wonderful rest of the year, and that you can eventually visit the new planetarium.
 
 Sincerely,
 Woody Gilbertson
 Space Hogs President

Thank you so much to every person who donated to our campaign! We have reached our $8,000 goal! This is a huge step towards purchasing the new planetarium. As we mentioned in the description, the total cost of the planetarium is significantly higher, but these funds that you have helped us raise can now be used to match additional sources of funding, effectively doubling the amount. We are currently in the process of applying for a few different grants, and we hope to share more good news with everyone once we hear back. Since the campaign is now over, we will only send a couple more updates: if we are able to host a fundraising night at Torchy’s Tacos in the future we will let everyone know, and when we make our purchase we will post an update then as well.

In the meantime, we will be contacting those of you who reached various donation level perks. We hope that everyone is able to stay safe and healthy in the months to come. Thank you again for helping us reach our goal!

Last week we announced that we would be concluding our 30-day campaign with a fundraising night at Torchy’s Tacos. Unfortunately, the turn of events that have taken place regarding COVID-19 in the last week have made us feel like this is no longer the best course of action. We do no not think it is responsible for us to ask groups of people to gather together just for our fundraiser. Our fundraiser night at Torchy’s Tacos has been postponed until the CDC lifts its guidelines restricting mass gatherings. Similarly, all of our outreach events have been postponed until further notice.

Looking forward, I want to give one final big thank you to everyone who helped us throughout this campaign! From simply sharing the campaign online, telling others about it in person, or directly donating, all of you have helped make a significant impact. We’re planning on continuing forward with other fundraising options and applying for grants. We look forward to sharing more good news with all of you as we put these funds to good use and finally acquire our new planetarium.

We hope that everyone is able to stay safe and healthy. Thanks again for helping us with this incredible goal - we’re looking forward to bringing space science back to the public as soon as we can.

Wow, the energy for this project has been absolutely incredible! We’re at 75% now entering the final week of our 30-day campaign. Thanks again to everyone who has helped through donations and sharing our campaign, just a little bit left to go. We’ve been fortunate enough to be featured in the school news, local news such as the Fayetteville Flyer and NWA NPR station, and more. In the meantime, we’ve been continuing to push ourselves to educate and communicate space science to as many people as possible.

Last week we held a movie night on campus where we watched Behind the Curve, a documentary about flat-Earthers, focusing mainly on their thought processes and how they compare to the scientific method. Before I go any further, I would like to point out that the idea that the Earth is a flat circle is unequivocally wrong, and if you have any questions about this please feel free to contact any of the owners of this project - you can find our emails by clicking on our pictures above. Regardless of how incorrect the idea of a flat-Earth is, as communicators of science it is our job to respectfully reach out to everyone who we possibly can to increase scientific literacy. To put our money where our mouth is, after the movie we Skyped with a leader and recruiter of the flat-Earth society, including taking questions from the audience. It was one of our most challenging discussions yet, but everyone involved was very respectful of each other and overall it went well. We believe that it is critically important to be able to express complex scientific ideas to people of vastly different walks of life from ourselves, and this was certainly a trial of our methods.

Getting back to the campaign, we would like to let everyone know that we have planned an event for the end of the campaign! We will be celebrating the end of our 30-day crowdfunding campaign with a percentage night at Torchy’s Tacos on MLK in Fayetteville. This event will be on Thursday, March 19th, from 5 to 9 PM. If you show up to Torchy’s we’ll have several of our members there handing out flyers, and if you present a flyer when ordering your meal 15% of the profits will go directly to our fundraiser at no extra cost to you! We’re very grateful to Torchy’s Tacos for helping support our goals with this fundraiser night, so please come by to enjoy some delicious food and feel free to talk to our members about any space or planetarium related questions that you have. We’re very excited to see how this next week goes, and thanks again to everyone who has helped us get this far!

We've reached the halfway point on our 30-day campaign, and the 60% mark towards our fundraising goal. We're very happy with how things have gone so far, and we're excited to share some updates with all of you. Within the last week we have gone to three different events across Northwest Arkansas! Last Tuesday we were at Folsom Elementary for a STEAM night, last Thursday we were invited to the NWA Children's Shelter, and just last night we attended an astronomy night at Monitor Elementary in Springdale. We've included some images below of our members at these events, doing what we all love to do. Thanks to all of your donations, events just like these will be significantly enhanced when we're able to bring a brand new planetarium to show high-quality and up-to-date science to our audiences. Please keep sharing our campaign, together we've made excellent progress so far! Also, if you live near the U of A's Fayetteville campus, feel free to come to a special movie night we're hosting tomorrow evening (March 5th) starting at 6 pm. The event is open to the public and is located in the Union Theater (on the 4th floor of the Union). We'll be showing a documentary on flat-earthers and discussing scientific literacy and debate, with pizza served for attendees. 

What an incredible start to the campaign! We are just three days in, and already at 40% funding. Thank you so much to everyone who has donated and shared our project. We still have a significant amount of fundraising to do, but with this level of enthusiasm from the community we might be able to overachieve and accomplish some higher goals. I wanted to also take this moment to mention some of the history of space education that we have here at the University of Arkansas. The University has owned the current mobile planetarium for many years, but we also used to have a permanent planetarium as well. That planetarium, built in 2008, was also a project completed through passion for space education. It was built by hand from the parts of a grain silo by students and professors at the U of A. It operated through mid-2013 before being shut down. If you or someone you know attended the U of A in that time some of these photos may ring a bell! The U of A has a wonderful tradition of space education that our campaign is looking to continue into the 2020’s and beyond. Thanks again for all of your help so far, let’s keep this momentum going!