Day 3 of the workshop saw a diverse content with searching for asteroids, making spectroscopy and LIVE tour around the CERN!
Participants of Astronomy@myPC started the day with International Astronomical Search Collaboration (IASC), a program engaging students in real science to search for asteroids. Patrick Miller of IASC trained the teachers on how they can use the Astrometrica software to analyse the data. Asteroid hunt followed by an inspiring presentation by Michael and Suzanne Fayev.
While participants of Astrobomy@myPC enjoyed virtual-astronomy, Astronomy@myBackpack was busy building homemade spectroscopes with Leonor Cabarel. The activity gives a better understanding of our spectral range and as a bonus the participants got to take the homemade spectroscopy with them.
Astronomy is a visual subject, how do you share this beauty with people with vision impaired? Lina Canas of NUCLIO address this question in the next session with a tactile astronomy experience – “Meet Our Neighbors” – a project with hands-on astronomical materials for people with vision impaired. Canas showed how we can create simple tactile astronomy resources with low cost materials.
After lunch the participants of both workshops were in for a real treat from CERN. The session moderator Angelos Alexopoulos of Education Group at CERN took the participants in a live virtual tour of CERN! Steven Goldfarb and Anna Sfyrla of ATLAS Experiment who connected with the workshop live, introduced work of CERN and answered questions from teachers. Denis Oliveira Damazio from the group also connected virtually live to show a mockup tunnel of the CERN facility. “This is my second contact with CERN. I visited CERN in 2009 and it was a great experience. I think these virtual tours are very useful for both teachers and students as making a trip to CERN is not possible to everyone” said Christos Yfantis, a teacher from Volos shared his views. Yfantis added, “It was great to see and talk to scientists at CERN, inspiring.”
Live tour of CERN followed with Angelos Lazoudis (Ellinogermaniki Agogi) giving an introduction to “The Discover the COSMOS portal” – a repository used by many teachers in Europe. Lazoudis explained how educational materials at DtC been used by teachers and how effective they are.
Making the most out of the day, an observing session was arranged at the mountain Pelion for the participants. Although the weather didn’t cooperate, teachers and educators enjoyed some deep sky beauties.
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