This page reports our visits and outings during the project, month after month : museums, sky night observations, laboratories, conferences ...
February 2016
Our first evening of stars observation took place in the Lycée le Verger's car park from 8:00 to 10:30 pm on the 12th of February 2016.
The ARECA, a Reunionese association, provided us astronomy tools and materials for our ERASMUS+ European partnership ORIONS, as well as detailed explanations. During the evening we saw constellations such as Orion, the Southern Cross, the Canis Major. Then we observed the Moon and Jupiter with telescopes. The evening was great, we learned how telescopes work and how to recognize constellations with the support of the Stellarium application and of a questionnaire :
Our outcomes are presented both in the SOLAR SYSTEM and the SKY sections : just follow the French flag !
Lucas
May 2016
Visiting the Palais de la Découverte, Paris
We took advantage of our transit to Sicily (May 2016) to visit the Palais de la Découverte, a famous Science Museum in Paris.
We had a wonderful time!
Myrtille
Night sky observation at school
On Friday 27th May 2016, we had our second night sky observation for the ORIONS project. We met at the Le Verger high school parking from 6 pm to 8:30 pm.
Seeking constellations on Stellarium
We observed Saturn, Jupiter and Mars with a telescope.
The main constellation of the winter night sky was Scorpius and its brightest star Antares. We also had a look at the Leo, one of the zodiac constellations, also of course the Southern Cross, Canis Major with Sirius (the brightest star in the sky). The ARECA association gave us many information, such as the time that light takes to come to us from each planet. For example the light from Saturn takes approximatively 1 hour 20 minutes to reach us! That was a great time and we learned a lot of things so that we could complete are pages about the SOLAR SYSTEM and the SKY!
Jonas
August 2016
Conference at the Aimé Césaire multimedia library of Sainte-Suzanne
On Wednesday 31st August 2016, we had a conference about the eclipse of 1st September 2016 in Réunion. The conference was held at the Aimé Césaire multimedia library of Sainte-Suzanne.
They talked about what we should do : we should not look directly at the Sun, even for just a few seconds, we should look at it with special glasses ( for example ). They also talked about what we should watch : the "ring of fire" and the Baily's beads.
Julien
November 2016
On the 3rd of November, we went to the Maïdo atmospheric observatory.
In this place they study the composition of the atmosphere above the island. They study it to have weather forecast and make us aware against the cyclones. To do it, they use air samples at the earth level for the pollution and a LIDAR (a giant laser) to study the composition of the atmosphere and the way the air layers are moving. For the composition of the atmosphere they use a molecular analyser to know the atoms composing the air. They look at the spectrum of the light that come from the sun to deduce the composition of the atmosphere using the absorption lines.
Jonas and Hassan