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| Marton Hidas and Tracey Hill modelling the
Astronomy on the Go shirts before heading out on tour. |
Michael Burton demonstrating the SEARFE experiment,
with four budding science students. Photo courtesy of James
Alcock (The Sun-Herald) |
In June of 2003, the Astrophysics Department of UNSW in conjunction
with the science communication program ran a major outreach activity
designed to communicate astronomy to high school students across NSW.
The three tours to schools in the North, West and South were designed
to coincide with the International Astronomical Union (IAU) meeting
held in Darling Harbour in July 2003.
After months of careful preparation by A/Prof Michael Burton, Dr
Will Saunders (Anglo Australian Observatory), the staff of the Science
Outreach Centre, astrophysics and science communication students,
and two German exchange students, the tours kicked off with much
enthusiasm. Marton Hidas, Cormac Purcell, Steve Longmore and Tracey
Hill, as team leaders, were not only responsible for the chauffeuring
of everyone else, but also for coordinating the visits to each school,
and ensuring that they went off without a hitch.
The tours to the schools involved giving talks on the Solar System
and the Stars to the younger students, and introducing the older
HSC level students to Project SEARFE – run in collaboration
with the CSIRO in anticipation of a possible Australian location
for SKA/LOFAR. At each stop on the tour, there was also an observing
night held for the local amateur astronomers to observe, and satisfy
their curiosity about, the heavens. In Port Macquarie, some of the
not-so local school children were so keen that they travelled for
over 3 hours to attend the observing night.
In all, the Astronomy on the Go tours were a major success. I don’t
think that any of us involved will forget the thrill of imparting
astrophysical knowledge of the heavens to such enthusiastic audiences.
Some of us even had the delight of being asked some rather unusual
questions (e.g. “are there babies on Mars?” or the little
boy who asked one of the presenters if he was single), which added
to the jovial nature of the tours.
For more information on the tours refer to http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/outreach
Tracey Hill
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