Students from St Benedicts Sixth form enjoyed an Astronomy evening this week; the students had a talk from our Astronomy enthusiast (and LSC science technician) Mr Jon Gregory using the star gazing software Stellarium focusing on the scientific information to really stretch our budding astrophysicists. We were then lucky enough to get a break in the cloud so that students could stargaze through our Newtonian telescope, the gasp of wonder as students first glimpse the moon through the scope never ceases to make me smile. We were treated to a waxing crescent moon, a scintillating Sirius, the red giant of Betelgeuse; Rigel the brilliant blue/white star, and an excellent viewing of Procyon also known as the little dog star. The students warmed up with hot chocolates, marshmallows, and biscuits, supplied by Mr D’Mello, whom then stretched the students further with calculation challenges and a lecture on blackbody curves and the relationship between temperature and colour. Thank you to our enthusiastic sixth form students, Mr D’Mello and Jon Gregory for their inspirational Astronomy knowledge.

Mr D’Mello and I would like to invite Year 11 students to a revision evening based on the astronomy content of their GCSE physics curriculum, this is for both separate scientists and combined scientists, hopefully we will have some star gazing (cloud behavior dependent), we will definitely have a talk or two by Mr Gregory and possibly hot chocolates and marshmallows The date for your diaries is the 7^th March 2018 6-8pm.