Random Review: The Herschel Astronomical Society

This evening, armed with a pair of binoculars and a wobbly telescope my son and I went to his school to do a bit of star-gazing and in what could only be  a delicious cliché, we came back completely starry-eyed…..

The Herschel Astronomical Society was set up for keen amateur enthusiasts of astronomy to meet and share their mutual interest in the stars. Named after Sir William Herschel, the astronomer who, on 13 March 1781, using a telescope he had made himself, discovered the planet Uranus, the society organises meetings and events at Eton College for anyone interested in learning more about astronomy.

The society has its own observatory with two ginormous telescopes (which we got to use and which were so powerful we could see Buzz Lightyear brushing his teeth on the moon), and they offer what they call Public Viewing Sessions, where the society will either invite children to their observatory or come to schools with their telescopes with a view to promoting astronomy. My son’s school had invited the society to come to the school itself and so we all arrived at the main building at 6.30pm, in the dark with our gazing gear. As we were ushered into the school, tables inside were piled high with little booklets, each entitled “Star Guide for 2012″ which had been prepared by the BBC and Open University. The booklets offered really great, practical tips on what kind of things were good to take with you on a star spotting mission and which stars you could expect to see throughout the year.

Stargazing Live: A guide to the stars in 2012

Little people love going out at night, so the fact that you have to wait until it’s dark to see the stars makes the evening feel very magical and it was lots of fun, too. A big projector screen had been put in the main hall and as we watched the screen, we could see all the stars that were out near the school.The images were amazing and then we discovered that the software being used was actually a free download from the internet.

Stellarium is a free open source planetarium which you can download onto your computer and it’s seriously cool.  With over 600,000 stars to look at, a powerful zoom tool and even constellation set ups to view, this software is impressive and very life-like.

Stellarium at work: The constellations with images

Once we had been briefed about what we might see in the night sky (and as the sky was clear, we were in for a treat – Venus, Jupiter and the moon were all up and shining brightly), we walked to the school garden and were greeted by several large telescopes, with tracking equipment, locked on to various planets and stars ready for us to take a peep at.

The gentlemen who came from the Herschell Astronomical Society were passionate about astronomy and were very informative and brilliant to listen to. When I asked if I could try to take a photo of the moon from one of their telescopes, they were incredibly kind and allowed me to do so. I nearly fainted with excitement, but that is another story for another day.

Photo of the moon, captured from inside a telescope using a mobile phone camera

We stayed outside for an hour and a half, gazing into all the telescopes, trying to find Orion’s Belt, ooh-ing and aaaah-ing at Jupiter’s moons and wowing at Venus, who slipped away first, leaving Jupiter and the moon behind. Then, the cloud began to set in and suddenly everyone could feel the cold creeping under their jackets and gloves.

As events for children go, this one has to count as one of the best we’ve ever experienced. It was in the dark – you can’t beat the dark for excitement where little people are concerned (and big people aren’t much better) and it offered the chance to see something unusual and fantastical. Kids are naturally curious and the sky is an endless source of fascination for them, a place which takes centre stage in fairy tales and where wishes come true. Stars are the stuff dreams are made of and the Herschel Society’s hands-on evening was truly enchanting.

If a little person comes away from an educational experience having learned something but not realising that they have, you know you’ve done a great job. That’s exactly what the Herschel Society delivered this evening and we can’t recommend their star-gazing extravaganza enough. A stellar ten out of ten for a spectacular production.

For more images from the Herschel Society, click on the photo above

Where Children Sleep – Photography

Hat tip to Kathryn McTaggart for posting this amazing photography collection by James Mollison on the social media site Twitter, featured in the New York Times.

The photos are all of children’s bedrooms around the world and as a piece of photo journalism it’s extremely powerful. These pictures allow us into another world, a private world filled with cultural colour, sometimes controversial and often hugely revealing. The photos are truly beautiful but all hide their own unsettling secrets about the way children dream and how it affects their world when they wake.

There’s Risa, 15, training to be a geisha and a small boy from Romania who sleeps outside. And then there’s Indira, 7, from Nepal who works in a quarry and Erien, 14, who slept on the floor until the late stages of her pregnancy. These images challenge our view of the world, from those children who sleep in cell-like rooms with hard beds to those whose rooms are filled with toys and tokens of their achievements, each picture tells a story and each one asks us to question the tale.

We haven’t come across such a haunting and thought-provoking set of photos like this for a while. A definite must-see.

Joey, 11, killed his first deer at the age of 7. He lives with his family in Kentucky.

 

Lorecast

This week, John Bolch and I cover the latest family related stories, from Essex County Council’s payout for child abuse failings to the latest news on child abduction.

Lorecast for the week to the 23rd January, 2012.

Question It!

Happy Monday!….. We realise this might be something of a Paradox, but we can’t but help but feel sorry for Mondays. It really isn’t their fault that the working week starts with these guys, so we wish Mondays happiness and go on our merry way, especially as the sun is shining and, thankfully, it does not appear to be Minus Ten outside.

Our question this week comes from the latest research on divorcing couples. A new study indicates that depending upon whether a spouse feels guilt or shame, their conduct in the divorce process will vary, with quite distinct results. The report goes on to suggest that if a spouse feels guilty, their behaviour is more likely to be conciliatory but if a spouse feels ashamed, the opposite is true and that spouse is more likely to be confrontational. Do you agree?

Possible answer: This study is quite narrow and we are not told what nationalities took part, but we feel it is too simplistic. Variations in reaction to a traumatic event like divorce, we feel, differ greatly from culture to culture and person to person and in any event, guilt and shame are often so closely interlinked in divorce that one spouse may feel both emotions at any given time.

Doctors more Likely to Suspect Abuse in Poor Kids

Another hat tip, and this time to the wonderful Alison Stevens at PAIN, who shared this article with us. The news item, which comes from Reuters, tells us that a new study in the US indicates that pediatricians who read a fictional case report of a toddler with a leg fracture were more likely to suspect abuse if the child was described as coming from a lower-income family. Interestingly, the child’s race did not seem to have any bearing on this assumption.

The article goes on to say that, “When the child’s family was lower-income, 48 percent of pediatricians thought there’d been abuse, versus 43 percent when the family was higher-income”. We are not sure, given the relatively narrow margin, whether this is a material finding, although we do think that stereotypes can play a dangerous part in misdiagnosis.

The source for this study, (Journal of Pediatrics, online January 5, 2012) can be found at the bottom of the news article.