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