To mark the start of National Science Week 2008 and the opening of a new exhibition in the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff, LCOGT was asked to attend a space themed day, last Saturday.
Edward Gomez and Jon Yardley setup a stand with laptops for the general public to use to make colour images from archive Faulkes Telescope data (using Adobe Photoshop elements with the ESA, FITS liberator plugin) and explore solar system (using the free software Celestia).
Museum had over 1500 visitors to the science day (excellent considering the foul weather and Welsh rugby match). The audience, mostly children aged 8 to 12 years and their parents, found making a colour image from what looked like 3 grey images very rewarding. The kids especially enjoyed being able to take away a freshly printed copy of the image they had just processed.
Cardiff University public engagement division also provided 5 astrophysics students to help demonstrate the use of the software and help answer any questions.
In addition to the LCOGT contingent there were stands from Spaceguard centre, Cardiff Astronomical Society and Dark Skies UK. The museum also ran workshops on asteroid impacts, where kids could drop different mass rocks into sand and see the size of the crater, then compare this is a full physical treatment of an asteroid hitting the Earth.
One of the highlights of the day was a talk given by Prof. Colin Pillinger (Open University), project scientist for the ESA Beagle 2 mission to Mars. He talked about Mars, the Beagle 2 mission and introduced the exhibition, which is a collection of his cartoons about Mars called "Mars in their eyes" - see the museum website for more information.
The whole day was enormously enjoyable and an excellent opportunity for outreach to young, bright kids who were bursting with questions about space and astronomy.
Image courtesy of Jay Tate, director of Spaceguard Centre UK.
