The New Curiosity Shop

Adult Learners’ Week runs from 9th to 15th May this year and NCS is doing its bit to support it. You can try some course snippets and a complete free course over at the NCS ALW page. Try a course on Archaeology, Health Care or Herbology. It’s all free for Adult Learners’ Week.

Happy Easter

A happy Easter to all our readers!

It also looks like the weather is improving; just the right time to be taking a course with an outdoors element. May we suggest getting out in the garden for some Herbal Remedies, or maybe the Ecology of Your Garden is of interest? Maybe travel beckons and an Introduction to Archaeology would be nice? There is still time to squeeze in one of our Astronomy courses before the lighter nights draw in.

We are aware that the southern hemisphere is moving into autumn and the longer nights are approaching, and for you we have plenty of other courses to while away the winter evenings.

The Story Of Apollo

The New Curiosity Shop has just launched a new kind of course. A mix between a science course and a history course, The Story Of Apollo will take learners back to the cold war era to examine the cultural factors and the engineering that made possible the US moon missions and the eventual landing of men on the Moon in 1969.

Astronomy tutor, Mark Toner said, “It is nice to branch out into another field that is of interest to me. Now the events which inspired me as a child are the stuff of history. I hope that I can transmit some of my enthusiasm to the students who take this new course.”

The Story Of Apollo is live now, and you can investigate it on the NCS web site.

Students at Newbattle Abbey College explore the night sky.

To celebrate the International Year of Astronomy 2009, the world’s first Dark Sky Discovery Sites were unveiled yesterday at Newbattle Abbey College in Dalkeith in Scotland. The grounds of the college are particularly well suited, providing a site sheltered from the light pollution of Edinburgh, but still being close enough to be easily reached by the local population.

It’s a particularly good site for the NCS, as we have our office at Newbattle Abbey College, and we are proud to be associated with the college.

This site, and another near Fort William in the North West of Scotland were selected by The Dark Sky Scotland partnership. This is an initiative that promotes astronomy in Scotland, and excels in reaching communities to get people out there at night to appreciate the wonders of the night sky. They also have a brilliant inflatable planetarium for when the clouds come over.

To find out more about Dark Sky Scotland, and the Dark Sky Discovery Sites visit Dark Sky Scotland. 

Also, Newbattle Abbey College.

Government ministers have called for science teachers to work harder to attract pupils to science. It appears that Scotland is no longer the leader in science education that it used to be, falling behind countries like Kazakhstan, Slovenia and Armenia.

The biggest gap in cool science is in the crucial earlier years, from primary school up to Standard Grade. Pupils are not being challenged to rethink stereotypes of scientists nor being turned on to the importance of science to our 21st century society.

The Scottish government has awarded a grant of £2.1 million to the Scottish Schools Equipment Research Centre to support the professional development of science teachers and technicians, and has provided £250,000 for the continuous professional development of primary teachers, to be administered at the four science centres across the country. It has also provided pilot funding of £140,000 to help set up and strengthen school science clubs.

More from the Times Online ….

On Tuesday, two satellites, Kosmos 2251 and Iridium 33, collided in the sky above Siberia. Experts are watching the debris cloud as it expands, trying to keep track of each piece dangerous to space navigation. Spaceweather.com is broadcasting a live audio feed of the radar tracking signals as the pieces of satellite pass over the USAF Space Surveillance Radar facility in Texas. There is more information at the Spaceweather site.

NASA has announced the names of the researchers who will start the Lunar Science Institute. The seven scientists will head research teams in a number of areas of lunar science, all directed towards making the best use of future lunar exploration. While the engineering work on a new manned spacecraft system is under review, possibly forcing NASA to fall back on existing technology such as Atlas, the creation of a Science Institute is probably a more convincing step in showing the commitment of the US to a return to the Moon.

Carle Pieters of Brown University will head a group investigating the Moon in the context of the early development of Earth, Venus, Mercury and Mars. The scientific and exploration potential of the lunar poles will be investigated by a team led by Ben Bussey of  Johns Hopkins University. David Kring of the Lunar and Planetary Institute will be looking at how impacts were important in the formation of the Moon. The lunar environment will be investigated by William Farrell, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. William Bottke, Southwest Research Institute, will lead the team researching the history of impacts on the Moon. Jack Burns, University of Colorado, will head a group with the interesting goal of exploring the cosmos from the Moon. Finally, Mihaly Horanyi, also of University of Colorado, will take charge of the Colorado Center for Lunar Dust and Atmospheric Studies.

More from the Lunar Science Institute…

Cloisters 22, the latest edition of our magazine is out now. It’s our Christmas edition, with lots more to get your brain teeth into, while your dentures tackle another mince pie. If you want to make any comments please add them to this post.

Have a jolly old Christmas, and a romping New Year. We’re taking a couple of weeks or so to wind down, before embarking on what, we hope, will be a top notch 2009. Keep smiling.

From all at the NCS.

NASA Image

Spacecraft watchers have found a new object to track as it orbits the Earth. Edward Light saw an orbiting tool bag using 10×50 binoculars as it sailed over his backyard in Lakewood, New Jersey, after sunset on November 22nd. The toolbag had been dropped during a spacewalk by shuttle astronaut Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper and has proved to be a surprisingly bright orbiting object despite its small size. You can find out more about the flying toolbag on NASA’s Spaceweather site.

Meanwhile, European leaders are meeting to discuss the goals of Europe’s activities in space. More from the BBC…

The Daily Sun (NASA Spaceweather.com)

Solar physicists are happily tracking a new group of sunspots called Active Region 1008. This is something of a relief as the Sun has exhibited a long period of inactivity recently. There is a cycle, lasting approximately eleven years, of solar activity which sees the Sun change from very low numbers of sunspots and little activity in the way of flares and ejections to large numbers of sunspots and many energetic flares. The current minimum of the cycle has continued for almost two years and scientists were beginning to speculate that the Sun was in another Maunder Minimum – the period during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries when the Sun produced almost no activity for seventy years. However, recent increases in activity, including Active Region 1008, have dispelled this idea. It seems that the current minimum, while a little longer than in recent cycles, is not unusual.

You can read more about Active Region 1008 at the NASA Spaceweather site. NASA also have an article addressing the worries about the recent long solar minimum.

REMEMBER: never look at the Sun directly and especially never look at it through any kind of optical instrument. For tips on safe solar observing see the Spacepod site or take a course with the NCS Astronomy Department.