2009 National Science Week Promo July 31, 2009
Posted by astroed in Education.add a comment
Here is the promotional video for this year’s National Science Week, 15 – 23 August. The National Project is the Big Aussie Star Hunt which I have been involved with. It promises to be a really useful resource. I’ll write more about this soon.
Cosmos and Culture at the Science Museum in London July 28, 2009
Posted by astroed in Astronomy.add a comment
One of my favourite places as a young boy growing up in London, The Science Museum in South Kensington, London has a new exhibition Cosmos & Culture: how astronomy has shaped our world. The website shows some of the varied exhibits on display including the 6 foot mirror from Leviathan, the Earl of Rosse’s great nineteenth century telescope in Ireland and a prototype beam splitter from LIGO. The exhibition also includes a first edition of Copernicus’ de Revolutionibus and one of William Herschel’s telescopes that he may have used to discover Uranus.
(Some of William Herschel’s eyepieces on display in the Science in the 18th Century gallery)
The BBC has a lovely slideshow of seven of the exhibits. The last one is particularly fun; the Moon Machine from Wallace and Grommit’s A Grand Day Out.
Cosmos & Culture is free and runs through to the end of 2010. If visiting the museum I’d also recommend that you go along to the Science in the 18th Century gallery as it has a fine collection of astronomical equipment from the era. Here are some photos I took of some of the displays when visiting last September.
Another must-see gallery is Exploring Space.
In praise of astronomers July 27, 2009
Posted by astroed in Astronomy.add a comment
The Guardian in the UK had a great editorial on Saturday 25 July; In praise of astronomers celebrating their achievements and contributions. It concludes:
Astronomers around the world compete, co-operate and confer; they are a global community, in the richest sense of the term, and we owe to them our understanding of space and time, and light, and mass, and gravity: in a word, everything.
Thanks Megan for the tip off.
