Trip to Alston Observatory

Today it was the Final Session in The Rose School in Burnley and rather than a normal session we took a trip away to Alston Observatory. (Map link here). This facility is available to us as a part of our partnership with the excellent University of Central Lancashire. This was a fantastic day and we enjoyed the presentation entitled 'Telescopes as Time Machines', along with video projected on to the observatory dome, further video about Saturn and the Cassini mission. The students and teaching staff got an opportunity to play with a couple of telescopes , although seeing was limited to distant terrestrial sights of course, since it was daytime.

This really was a great experience for the students and I can only imagine what an evening open day is like there as it is a very dark location and there is some fantastic equipment there. UCLAN could not have a better facility for its outreach programme. I am very envious of the staff that get to use the place!

Here is a Picasa photostream from the day. Click the image to view the rest.

Rose School Observatory Trip

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Further Progress

I haven't blogged for a week or so, mainly because the work is picking up and things are getting hectic. Next week we take a trip to UCLAN and I am very much looking forward to that. What I am most pleased about is that we have secured a further contract to deliver our service, this time to one primary school over the course of three days in May. We are very excited to be working with this particular school and I personally look forward to meeting the pupils. If they are anything like the pupils we have encountered so far they will no doubt be fund to work with and a pleasure to be around. The schools in Burnley have a wealth of talent in them, perfect for educating our way out of recession. I look forward to the day when students begin to graduate from universities they attended because we inspired them to pursue academia, and in particular the sciences.

Tune Read More!

Progress

More progress. This week was comets for one school, climate change for another and for one more, black holes. All three classes were great and it is fantastic to see Burnley endowed with such talented students. There are definitely good times ahead for these students.

Today I began another series in another series of sessions in a new school. I cycled to this one and disaster struck when my chain snapped. I was so relieved that Laura was able to rescue me. I arrived on time fortunately and all was well. In this session there were almost twenty students plus two parents. I am always very pleased when I see children and parents learning together. That is a rewarding thing for Beauty In The Universe. This was another great school, and I think we will do well for the students there.

Did you know that the recent Earthquake in Chile slowed the Earth's rotation by 0.126 milliseconds?

Dream Theater: Raw Dog Read More!

Busy Busy, Busy

Man I have been busy recently. Funding applications left, right and centre, teaching, planning, stargazing, researching, cycling wherever I can. The summer is coming and things are looking good. This week was another great week for teaching. We covered the most requested subject Beauty in the Universe receives, Black Holes. Getting across to students the weirdness of these objects is quite a challenge, and I hope they got it. Even more so as I now know that they read both mine and Erica's blog.

I'm watching you kids.

I kid of course. I am planning to shift our programme slightly and cover the end of all things next week. This will allow me to talk about the conservation of nergy, thermodynamics and entropy. Stay tuned as that should be a pretty barking mad lesson conducted partly in the yard, weather permitting of course.

Some may have noticed I frequently post a song at the end of my posts. Music is a fine wonder, so this week I sign of with a classic of American pop/rock, the mighty Toto performing 'Africa' live. Read More!