The Wish Upon A Star project officially kicked off on Friday with sessions at Brindle Gregson Lane Primary School in Preston. The pupils were fantastic and we had a great time. There is a great deal we could say, but the children said it best. Hit up the video below for the full story.
Follow @StarWishProject on Twitter. Below is an Audioboo I made about the project and this school:
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Audioboo/Podcast Radio
We have recently begun an audio podcast, just a home-brew guerrilla radio show. I hope it will develop as we go but of now you can enjoy the astronomy episodes. It is Adam's personal account so there are shorts on other subjects such as cycling (he's obsessed) and various bits and pieces, but the astronomy ones will be embedded here for you to listen to. The first three are below, and we will post them here as they are recorded.
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Audioboo/Burnley Work Inspiration
Posted by
Adam
Friday, 2 March 2012
Labels:
Aircelle,
Audioboo,
Burnley Work Inspiration,
Podcast
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comments
I have started a podcast feed over at Audioboo. You can get it here. It's an informal glimpse in to what we do and how it goes down. It is recorded on the fly using my iPhone so expect it to sound like a guerrilla type radio show. I'll podcast about our activities, even have interviews from learners and document events. Enjoy!
Thursday last I attended Burnley Work Inspiration day at Aircelle, Burnley. This was a great day where children were introduced to future career opportunities with some great companies. I was able to turn them on to the sciences and academia as a path for them, and many were suitably impressed with what they could accomplish in an academic career. If any of the seeds I planted do grow I'll likely never see the trees that they become, but it was still nice to be there to fly the flag for academia in front of these students. Photos of the Beauty In The Universe stand below:
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Thursday last I attended Burnley Work Inspiration day at Aircelle, Burnley. This was a great day where children were introduced to future career opportunities with some great companies. I was able to turn them on to the sciences and academia as a path for them, and many were suitably impressed with what they could accomplish in an academic career. If any of the seeds I planted do grow I'll likely never see the trees that they become, but it was still nice to be there to fly the flag for academia in front of these students. Photos of the Beauty In The Universe stand below:
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Darwen Science Fest!
Posted by
Adam
Thursday, 16 February 2012
Labels:
Beauty In The Universe Lecture,
Darwen Science Fest,
Summer Fun 4 All
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Yesterday Beauty In The Universe delivered the inaugural Beauty In The Universe lecture as a part of the Darwen Science Fest, hosted at Darwen Aldridge Academy and organised by Summer Fun 4 All. It was a great day as families came to see not only us, but other practitioners from Crown Paints, Mad Science and others. The photographs below are from the day. A fantastic event. Click the slideshow to see the full resolution images.
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2012
The new year is slowly moving in to gear and we kicked our activities off with an astronomy evening at Livesey Children's Centre in Blackburn. We had over 150 (count 'em: 150!) people, mostly families come along. Rather irritatingly the weather was clear all week, except for the night of this event so we could not get any stargazing in. That was unfortunate as I love doing that and the experience of using a telescope and discovering objects live at the eyepiece, particularly for people who have never observed before is a rather thrilling experience. It simply cannot be reproduced in the classroom or in a presentation, but, alas I have not yet developed the ability to control the weather so we enjoyed Sightseeing In Space instead.
We are in the process of making the necessary arrangements to deliver our next round of Stars and Stuff, our adult education initiative at this very centre so exciting times are ahead. Below are some photos of the evening that the centre staff very kindly snapped for me.
A great night was had by all. Read More!
We are in the process of making the necessary arrangements to deliver our next round of Stars and Stuff, our adult education initiative at this very centre so exciting times are ahead. Below are some photos of the evening that the centre staff very kindly snapped for me.
A great night was had by all. Read More!
2011 Round Up: Our Best Year Yet
Posted by
Adam
Wednesday, 21 December 2011
Labels:
2011 Round Up,
Badmintology,
Cumbria,
Family Learning,
Great Wood School,
Longsleddale,
Rocket,
Rocket Building,
Rockets,
Scorton,
Space Camp,
Star Party,
Stargazing,
Stars and Stuff
0
comments
As Christmas draws in I am doing my usual blog post summary of the year for Beauty In The Universe. Whilst you are all likely shutting down at work and securing the hatches for Christmas, as is everyone here except me, I have an extremely busy Christmas ahead of me, so it doesn't feel much like things are coming to an end for the year for me. Nonetheless, this year we stepped up our game in a big way and I've summarised our great successes below.
Our first residential trip
This year we ran our inaugural Space Camp. In partnership with Summer Fun 4 All we packed up our suitcases and cleared off to Longsleddale Outdoor Pursuits Centre in Cumbria, accompanied by the great Professor Ian Morison of Jodrell Bank. This went very, very well and I have no doubt that we will be doing it again. Photos from the weekend below:
Check out part 2 of the video diary I made (part 1 was before the children arrived):
Rocket building competition
This year we were involved in two rocket building competitions (with a third to come next year - more on that later). We staged one and judged another. Here is the one we judged at Calder Vale and Scorton schools in Lancaster:
Not only a brilliant education for the pupils, but if you watch to the end you'll see a remarkably powerful rocket built by one of the parents. It didn't even land in the same village! I'll never forget the children at Scorton and Calder Vale. It was such a great experience for me to go there and the staff and pupils were fantastic people. Photos of saying goodbye are below:
Stargazing and star parties
We staged a whole bunch of star parties at various schools, children's centres and other venues. These evenings are, for me, vital and among the best experiences we offer because no matter how good the classroom experience is, nothing can replace the experience at the eyepiece of a telescope. Below are selected photos from our events:
Great Wood School Alien Parade
Great Wood School in Morecambe was another brilliant place to go. They staged easily the most original astronomy-related event I have ever seen, an alien parade. The photographs below tell you all you need to know:
Other highlights include the arrival of Kathryn Wright. She has been an outstanding addition to Beauty In The Universe. The long-awaited project launch of Beauty In The Environment which Kathryn herself took forward and completed was a welcome event and ended a frustrating period of development. That project has been extremely challenging to get of the ground, but now that it is up and running we have several big projects ready to go in 2012.
It has also been great to develop our working relationship with UCLAN, to the point where we are now collaborating on some phenomenally exciting projects, namely Wish Upon a Star and the 24 Hour Bottle Rocket Challenge (blog post about those here). The latter project also puts us in the sights of NASA, so we expect that this project will be a huge opportunity for us to develop what we do and expand our work. These projects will be my Christmas work, and the reason I am not really shutting down personally.
2011 has been our best year yet and the successes shown signs of stopping. Expect big things from us in 2012. Read More!
Our first residential trip
This year we ran our inaugural Space Camp. In partnership with Summer Fun 4 All we packed up our suitcases and cleared off to Longsleddale Outdoor Pursuits Centre in Cumbria, accompanied by the great Professor Ian Morison of Jodrell Bank. This went very, very well and I have no doubt that we will be doing it again. Photos from the weekend below:
Check out part 2 of the video diary I made (part 1 was before the children arrived):
Rocket building competition
This year we were involved in two rocket building competitions (with a third to come next year - more on that later). We staged one and judged another. Here is the one we judged at Calder Vale and Scorton schools in Lancaster:
Not only a brilliant education for the pupils, but if you watch to the end you'll see a remarkably powerful rocket built by one of the parents. It didn't even land in the same village! I'll never forget the children at Scorton and Calder Vale. It was such a great experience for me to go there and the staff and pupils were fantastic people. Photos of saying goodbye are below:
Stargazing and star parties
We staged a whole bunch of star parties at various schools, children's centres and other venues. These evenings are, for me, vital and among the best experiences we offer because no matter how good the classroom experience is, nothing can replace the experience at the eyepiece of a telescope. Below are selected photos from our events:
Great Wood School Alien Parade
Great Wood School in Morecambe was another brilliant place to go. They staged easily the most original astronomy-related event I have ever seen, an alien parade. The photographs below tell you all you need to know:
Other highlights include the arrival of Kathryn Wright. She has been an outstanding addition to Beauty In The Universe. The long-awaited project launch of Beauty In The Environment which Kathryn herself took forward and completed was a welcome event and ended a frustrating period of development. That project has been extremely challenging to get of the ground, but now that it is up and running we have several big projects ready to go in 2012.
It has also been great to develop our working relationship with UCLAN, to the point where we are now collaborating on some phenomenally exciting projects, namely Wish Upon a Star and the 24 Hour Bottle Rocket Challenge (blog post about those here). The latter project also puts us in the sights of NASA, so we expect that this project will be a huge opportunity for us to develop what we do and expand our work. These projects will be my Christmas work, and the reason I am not really shutting down personally.
2011 has been our best year yet and the successes shown signs of stopping. Expect big things from us in 2012. Read More!
Big Plans for 2012
Posted by
Adam
Thursday, 15 December 2011
Labels:
2012,
Bottle Rocket Challenge,
Hi-C,
India,
NASA,
UCLAN,
Wish Upon A Star
0
comments
We have been working very hard over the last few months in order to put in place some very exciting projects for the new year and now, after much deliberation and effort we are finally able to go ahead and announce them here. We have two coming up and they are huge.
Wish Upon A Star
This project is great. We are working with the University of Central Lancashire to produce a book. This is a sort of pseudo-sequel to one of their previous projects, Letters to Africa. Below is a promotional video about that project:
You can see that this was a tremendously powerful project, and the book is still available to buy as well.
This time, rather than exchanging letters, the children who get involved with this will exchange either a constellation, a star or some other astronomical object and the book produced at the end will be a sort of chronicle of the exchange process. The other difference is that rather than Africa, UCLan and Beauty In The Universe will fly out to India this time.
This is a tremendous project and we hope that, if you are from a UK school you will get involved. The official website will be up very shortly at www.wishuponastarproject.co.uk.
24 Hour Bottle Rocket Challenge
This is a very exciting project for us to be involved in. The background to this is the NASA Hi-C mission, an experimental spacecraft which will launch next year and which will photograph the Sun at a higher resolution than ever before. To commemorate this we are working with UCLan and NASA to see as many bottle rockets launched in 24 hours as possible. We will be developing learning materials and promoting this in schools to get as many involved as possible.
Very soon I will be able to direct you to the official website for this project.
2012 is set to be a very exciting year for us. Hope you come along for the ride! Read More!
Wish Upon A Star
This project is great. We are working with the University of Central Lancashire to produce a book. This is a sort of pseudo-sequel to one of their previous projects, Letters to Africa. Below is a promotional video about that project:
You can see that this was a tremendously powerful project, and the book is still available to buy as well.
This time, rather than exchanging letters, the children who get involved with this will exchange either a constellation, a star or some other astronomical object and the book produced at the end will be a sort of chronicle of the exchange process. The other difference is that rather than Africa, UCLan and Beauty In The Universe will fly out to India this time.
This is a tremendous project and we hope that, if you are from a UK school you will get involved. The official website will be up very shortly at www.wishuponastarproject.co.uk.
24 Hour Bottle Rocket Challenge
This is a very exciting project for us to be involved in. The background to this is the NASA Hi-C mission, an experimental spacecraft which will launch next year and which will photograph the Sun at a higher resolution than ever before. To commemorate this we are working with UCLan and NASA to see as many bottle rockets launched in 24 hours as possible. We will be developing learning materials and promoting this in schools to get as many involved as possible.
Very soon I will be able to direct you to the official website for this project.
2012 is set to be a very exciting year for us. Hope you come along for the ride! Read More!
