A late evening at the Museum

Open Meteorites / January 30, 2015

On Wednesday evening (28/01/15), Dr Simon Sheridan and I had an exhibit at the Science Musuem’s Lates event. These are themed free-to-enter events held by the museum on the last Wednesday of every month. The theme in January was “Engineer Your Future” an event to encourage engineering in the UK and we were there to showcase the OU’s Ptolemy instrument on the Philae Lander. We were surprised at how popular the event was, with 4310 people attending. It was an enjoyable evening, describing the ambitious Rosetta mission and re-living the excitement of landing on the comet. Many were fascinated and amused by the 3D comet model that we used during the landing site selection meetings, “Chury” the plastic duck. At the end of the evening we handed “Chury” to the museum curators for posterity, it is now a national treasure!

Andrew Morse

 

Dr Andrew Morse (without refreshment! and facing away from the camera) explains the pitfalls and difficulties involved in landing on a comet and then staying on it once you have touched down. (image: Simon Sheridan)

Dr Simon Sheridan (far right) talking to some visitors at the Science Museum’s Lates event. Simon is explaining the engineering challenges involved in constucting the OU’s Ptolemy mass spectrometer, which is part of the instrument package on the Rosetta Mission’s Philae Lander. (image: Andrew Morse)

Share this:

 

Festive Space

Open Meteorites / December 18, 2014

On Monday 15th December I took part in the OU’s School-University Partnership Initiative (SUPI) Christmas lecture series. The audience was high school children aged between 12 and 16, parents, and teachers. My talk focused on my main research interest, which is searching for and analysing water in Moon rocks. After the talk there was an opportunity to bring out the meteorites. The kids were amazed that they were actually holding a piece of rock from Mars and asked some hard hitting questions about the prospect of finding life on Mars, and when and what future space missions might go to the red planet in search for life and when humans might go. As always Gibeon caught everyone’s attention, with the adults too, who didn’t believe the iron meteorite was as heavy as the kids made out! It was a great opportunity to engage with local schools about the space research carried out at the OU, and the impressive line-up of three planetary and space science talks (on the Moon, Mercury, and the Rosetta mission), followed by show-casing the meteorites and the comet 67-P and Ptolemy instrument models made for a brilliant event!

Jessica Barnes

Jess with Lunar Sample

Share this:

 

Premier Academy visits the Open University

Open Meteorites / November 20, 2014

On 18th November, three year 5 classes from MK’s Premier Academy visited The Department of Physical Sciences.  Vic Pearson and Laura Brooker spent 30 minutes with each class showing them the meteorite collection and talking to them about the Solar System.  Laura was also able to tell them more about her research into impacts.  The students also took a tour of the OU Observatory with Andrew Norton and heard from Ben Dryer about building instruments for satellites.

Meteor Crater, Northern Arizona (© Meteor Crater, Northern Arizona, USA website: http://goo.gl/guJSVk )

Victoria Pearson

 

Shooting Stars at Stanton School

Open Meteorites / June 16, 2014

On the Monday 9th June 14, I went to visit Stanton School for three presentations about rocks for Year 5 and 6 students. Rocks you say? Yes, but rocks from space! During the talks I presented the current state of our Solar System and where meteorites come from and how they entered our atmosphere. I also discussed the general effects of meteorite impacts, craters and the main collection places and campaigns. Finally, I gave a very short and general overview of what meteorites can teach us about the various Solar System planetary bodies and the early times of the Solar System. After the talk, I presented the meteorite samples in more detail. It is always a great time when the children realise that they are holding a piece of Mars or of the Moon, a planet and a satellite they can easily visualise, and these meteorites had a great success. During the presentation of the meteorites, the students were encouraged to ask any questions they might have and some of them were quite surprising. The teachers, the students, and I were delighted at the end of the afternoon.

Such visits remind us that sharing science with people, and especially children, is a great source of motivation in our work and it reminds us that we are not only working on meteorites just for us, but for everyone and that many people are still interested in space science.

Jean-David Bodénan

Spectacular bolide imaged during Okie-Tex stargazing event 2008 

(http://www.okie-tex.com/2008_party.php) (image: Howard Edin)

 

An Alien Experience

Open Meteorites / May 10, 2014

(image: clipartlord.com)

In early May the meteorites visited St Paul’s Catholic School to aid me with the ‘Spaced Out enterprise day’. During this day, 80 year 9 students took part in a space themed day where they were asked to design a space craft, astronaut suits and a create languages to talk to any aliens they might meet. I was there as the ‘space expert’ that they could ask technical question about space. While I was there I was using the meteorites to explain and illustrate what was out there in space and to enthuse the students about space science.

Beth Steer

 

 

On the road again – Geological Society Careers Fair

joshsnape / November 22, 2013

“Yesterday I took meteorites to the Geol Soc Careers Fair for university students at the BGS in Keyworth. There were many other universities there, but none had meteorites! As a result, I had lots of interested geologists (both students and people from the other stalls) coming over for a look, as geologists are essentially magpies! Once I explained what they were and what their significance was for our understanding of solar system formation processes, many people took our Open University literature and will hopefully will consider coming to the OU to do a planetary based PhD. Thanks meteorites!”

Beth Steer

Photo: NASA Dawn spacecraft at Vesta

 

2013 UK Space Conference

joshsnape / July 22, 2013

The Open University had a stand at the UK Space Conference in Glasgow last week. In addition to our large model of Rosetta‘s Philae lander, we took along our meteorite collection. They proved to be of great interest to both conference delegates and members of the public.

The OU team with UK astronaut Tim Peake (who is holding our sample of Krasnojarsk!)