Astronomy & Space Science Mr Bill Cooper Observatory Manager Another orbit around the Sun This year we saw the Philae lander on comet 67P/ Churyumov-Gerasimenko come back to life briefly, but has now gone silent. The comet itself has passed its closest point to the Sun. Measurements by the Rosetta orbiter suggest that up to 300 kilograms of water vapour – equivalent to two filled bath tubs – are spewing out of the comet every second. We were all witnesses to those amazing images from New Horizons of Pluto and its moons. Like most scientific discoveries, it told us a lot, but raised more questions to tantalise us. The surface of Pluto looks quite young, but as such a distant and cold member of the solar system we don’t have a satisfactory model as to where Pluto gets the energy for this resurfacing.
Samuel Carbone receives his Gemini Award from Prof Richard McDermid
The boys were excited about a possible megastructure around a distant star KIC 8462852. Could this be an advanced civilisation building a Dyson sphere around their home star? The Kepler telescope that is observing this phenomenon looks at the light output of the star and measures its changes a technique known as photometry. Whatever the cause of these light changes, it will tell us something about stars that we haven’t seen before. James Pears (11.7), our current scholarship student, has been looking at how variable stars alter their light output by this technique. The pictures don’t look visually stunning but they allow us to produce light curves. James started by looking at Cepheid variables – stars that were invaluable to astronomers determining stellar distances. Now James is looking at Delta Scuti variables – short period variable stars. The observation of pulsating stars enables us to derive their physical parameters like mass, temperature and luminosity. This has been a great year for Samuel Carbone (11.1), who was selected to represent Australia and Trinity College at the International Space School in Houston. Samuel tells me that this was a life-changing experience for him. Channel 7 came into school and interviewed Samuel about his experiences in the USA. At the end of last year, Samuel also won the Gemini Observatory Astrophotography Competition with a picture of NGC 7727 – a late-stage interacting galaxy. We were delighted to have Prof Richard McDermid, from the Australian Astronomical Observatory, coming to Perth especially to give Samuel a framed picture of his image.
Galaxy NGC 7727
Astronomy scholars James Pears (11.7), Julian Chilcott (12.6) and Luke Di Dio (12.1) have been responsible for running the astronomy nights for the Year 6 leadership camp at Dwellingup and the Junior School astronomy camp at Trinity. This year, Year 9 students built a large V2 model rocket which hasn’t launched yet but will launch early in 2016. We continue to have success with our high altitude balloon launches, launching twice this year. On the first flight, the balloon disappeared into low cloud and the video, even at 30km up, was an image of complete cloud cover, although the black box recorder showed a near perfect flight. Our second flight was on a cloud-free day and we had great views looking towards Lake Dumbleyung in the morning. Issues with the parachute meant a rapid descent into a paddock just east of Lake Dumbleyung. 233
