The PHAST Group acronym stands for the Piner High Astronomy, Science, and Technology Group. Most people call us the "Astonomy Club", but we feel we are much more than that.

The PHAST Group is entering its 11th year and has had 300+ members. Our mission is to further science and technology education through the use of Astronomy, Science, and Technology. We DO science rather than just talk about it. The club activities and responsibilities include the following:

• Star parties and celestial gatherings
• Operation of StarLab Planetarium
• Field trips to science and technology destinations
• Space science education for elementary school students
• Operation of PHAST Telescopes
• Using the Robert Ferguson Observatory at Sugarloaf State Park
• Planning of the Piner High Observatory/Science Center
• Sponsor of the Astronomy and Science Lecture Series

Some examples of PHAST Group activities include elementary school/Girl Scout Space Day where elementary students come to Piner and participated in various Space Science activities including the StarLab Planetarium, celestial story telling, and constellation finding.  The PHAST Group also sponsored Piner's Eclipse On The Green I, II, III, and IV where participants enjoyed looking at the solar (with special filters!) and lunar eclipses.  The club also hosted Mars On The Green to view Mar's opposition.  For two years, the PHAST group participated in the Welcome back concert providing visuals and telescopes for the Holst The Planets arrangement.  Every year the PHAST club sponsors an annual trip to the San Jose Tech Museum, The Academy of Science and the Chabot Space and Science Center.

This year the club has planned Star Parties/Observation Labs, another Space Science Day, Movie nights, fieldtrips, TIE program participation and our overnight Observatory trip. The TIE (Telescopes In Education) program is where the PHAST Group controls, via the Internet, a 24” telescope down in Southern California to take digital pictures of celestial objects.  In previous years we used the TIE 14” robotic scope and took some amazing images.  Our overnight trip at Sugarloaf State Park is when the PHAST Group gets exclusive use of the RFO Observatory facilities.

The PHAST Group has taken the StarLab planetarium to Maria Carillo and Elementary schools for presentations.  One of the future goals of the PHAST group is to have a fully functional observatory on campus where students can do original science and research.  The proposed facility is called PHASTAR (Piner High Astronomy, Science, Technology and Research).