2011 Round Up: Our Best Year Yet

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!

Big Plans for 2012

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!

Christmas Approaching

We are now in December and in a way things are starting to wind down for Christmas as one might expect, but at Beauty In The Universe we find ourselves busier than ever. Our sister company, Beauty In The Environment has just completed its first project and is currently in the planning phase of several big projects that will go live in the new year, so we have plenty to do on that front. As for astronomy activities, our adult education initiative, Stars and Stuff is four weeks in and due to end the last session of this first run of adult education on December 21st. Last night I took a chance and took some telescopes over to do some real stargazing. We were having intermittent spurts of clear sky and the weather held for around a half hour before the rain arrived and prematurely ended the session. Unfortunate, but it was half an hour gained, during which people got a glimpse of the Moon and Jupiter. I hope to do it again before we shut down for the holidays.

2012 brings with it some extraordinary opportunities for us. Although I cannot say a great deal about most of these things for now, it is looking a near-certainty that we will be going global and taking Beauty In The Universe abroad to continue our great work with an international audience. We will be collaborating with some fantastic organisations and doing some innovative work among great people. We will also be taking astronomy and also environmental science to new audiences and different demographics in the UK, maintaining one of our big priorities, which is to take the phenomenal discoveries of humankind to those who have never benefitted from, or learned about them before.

I will post more information as and when I can, so stay tuned. Read More!