Dwingeloo primary school visits telescope

© Tammo Jan Dijkema

On 12 and 22 November, in total some 50 children of the local primary school visited the Dwingeloo telescope, as part of their night-themed lessons. This was group 5 (~ 8 years old). With 25 chairs in the telescope, it was like a very cozy classroom. We showed them the night sky in Stellarium, and of course the live radio sky using the telescope, showing hydrogen lines and the live signal of a pulsar. Slewing the telescope was definitely the highlight for the children, so we did this a lot!

After the indoor program, we used inflatable planets to illustrate the scale of the Solar system. The picture shows the children using a tape measure to measure the planets' relative distance from the Sun (Mercury: 1,7m, Neptune: 135m). The teacher was assigned Proxima Centauri (1200km).