Blog

Stargazing Live is back on the BBC this year. The dates are 28th/29th and 30th March, as announced on the facebook page. Join in and get yourselves stargazing!  Click  here to the Facebook page for more details.

We thoroughly enjoyed our day at the Calne Scouts  group. The children took a journey through the solar system – from zip wiring on Mercury to skiing on Pluto, with our show ‘Great Planet Adventures’.  Of course the show was to help them with their astronomy badge, so we also took a tour of the night sky for that evening, and showed them some winter constellations. Pointing out interesting  objects that can be found with the naked eye or a small pair of binoculars along the way . We also had some telescopes for the children to try out (albeit on terrestrial targets due to the time of day!) and some real meteorites.

We had a great time at Powells Primary School. As part of  their science week  Alpha Dome presented 10 shows over 2 days. ‘A Journey into Outer Space’ went down a treat with the children, taking them on a trip into the future of space travel in our Solar System. The focus of their science week was water, so we tailored our introduction to link the importance of water, both here on Earth and in space, with show on how people might live on other planets.  As one of the teacher’s from a morning session put it “..Children were all really engaged and loved it  – still talking about it this afternoon.”

Don’t forget to watch Stargazing Live tonight (BBC2 9pm).  Professor Brian Cox will be talking with British astronaut Tim Peake as he orbits 250 miles above the Earth. There will also be a report on the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne, showing how Tim Peake prepared for his trip to the ISS, and guide to the night sky. More details can be seen  here .

A little bit late – but here is a montage picture of the Lunar eclipse from September 2015.  I took these between around 01:00 am and 03:00 am.  A Lunar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes through the shadow of the Earth, and the orange/red colour is due to refracted light from the Earth’s atmosphere.

This is our latest  fossil, which we are happy to bring along to show children as part of our dinosaur presentation. The teeth are from a mosasaur marine reptile that lived in the late cretaceous period.

Another new show available for the Autumn will be ‘Earth and Space’ for KS2. A few of the key concepts will include;

The Earth, Moon and Sun as separate almost spherical bodies.

Gravity

Night and day

The seasons.

The Moon and how we see it.

Distances of objects in space

A short film introducing the planets in our Solar System.

A simplified version of the presentation can also be made available for KS1 if required.

We are available to present from 2 shows per day, to a full school day. Please contact us with your requirements.

We had a great day showing ‘Back to the Moon’ and ‘Great Planet Adventures’ at the Sherston Boules Tournament over the weekend. Whilst we have presented several shows to Sherston School, this is the first time that parents had  an opportunity to see the shows too.  There was an excellent response,  the shows were full all day.

Alpha Dome mobile planetarium  is also now available for children’s parties – please call or e-mail for further details

We are busy working on an exciting new show all about light. Some of the topics covered will include;

• Sources of light
• Refraction
• Reflection
• How shadows change shape
• Speed of light
• The spectrum of light
• Opacity, translucency and transparency
• Movement of the Sun

Key concepts are demonstrated using our planetarium software and appropriate visual illustrations projected in the dome.  Please contact us for further information

The eclipse was amazing from above the clouds.  Here are a few pictures that I managed to take. Eclipses are an incredible way to see and demonstrate the solar system in motion.  We are lucky to that the Sun happens to be both 400 times larger and 400 times further away than the Moon.