Course 2015-2016 : our first meeting

Today we have started the activities. We would like to create some projects and watch the Moon, the planets and the sky night.
We will have:
- Saturday November the 7th ( 11:00 to 13:30 hours): we are going to visit the MUNCYT ( Alcobendas ). We will visit the museum and participate in the Planetarium activity.
- Friday November the 20th ( 19:00 to 22:30h ): we are going to watch the Moon and the summer-autumn constellations. We will go 50 km to the Nort of Madrid by bus.
Ask the members of the group in case you are interested to join the activities.

Let's start whatching

Let' play for a while

Autumn starry night watching

Last October the 30th we went to the countryside and enjoyed watching the Summer constellations which were hiding on the west , the autumn constellations in the Zenit ( top ), and the East, close to some winter ones which were appearing.

First of all we took a look at the First Quarter Moon. It was very nice to observe the craters, the lands and the sees. Angelo took very nice pictures.

Then we move to observe the Summer triangle and Vega, Altair and Deneb in its vertex.
In the Zenit was Pegasus, the winged horse in Greek Mythology. Below it, it was difficult to observe Piscis. Not far was Aries. Watching Aries it is not very stunning, because you are able to recognize just three stars in a row.

In the area is one of the most beautiful celestial object, the Andromeda galaxy. The galaxy is very nice to identify and to seek. It is also possible to recognize with the naked eye.
We were observing Taurus, the Pleiades and of course the circumpolar galaxies and stars: Ursa Major and Minor, Cassiopeia, Polaris star.

Within the observation and before leaving, we were taking a lot of pictures, some of the Moon and some of ourselves. All of them were taken in the darkness.

Last meeting in the scholar year

Today we have had our last meeting in the scholar course. We have gathered and have said goodbye the Astronomy activities in the school.

We have seen the iPad we were granted in the VI BEDA awards. We are going to use it in our meetings in the next school year.


If it is possible we are going to gather in July for watching the summer constallations.

Winners in the VI BEDA Awards

We took part in the  VI  BEDA Competition last may. It was  sponsored by FERE in  Madrid. Here are rated initiatives to improve the learning of English in schools.

The Astronomy group was  created in the school last year and seeing the interest of the students and their high level of commitment, we decided to continue with the group this year.

As an innovation for this course,  meetings and activities involving only group members are conducted in  English language.

In addition,  the group had promoted activities for the rest of the school,  carried, whenever possible,  speaking English as the base language of communication.

Our Astronomy Group have been considered as an  excellent proyect.  We have also been awarded with a diploma and an iPad.

This award means a lot to us, because  supports the effort we are making in the school to promote both innovation and learning the English language.


Here is our  project report, 

Watching the Spring-Summer sky night

Last Friday we watched the Spring -Summer sky night.

We drove 50 miles North of Madrid, to the place where the Asociación Astronómica Cruz del Norte of Alcobendas go to observe. There is some light pollution to the South, but it is not a big problem and it is located quite close to Madrid.

Firstly we observed a 1-2 days Moon, which was  slowly hiding. We made our first photos of it . After that we move to the planet we are able to observe at the moment: Jupiter, Mars and Saturn. Jupiter was  surrounded by its four major moons (Io , Ganymede , Europa and Calisto ), a Lovely Mars  with the shape of an orange ball and a spectacular Saturn and  ring.

We observed the typical spring constellations Leo and Virgo.  Gemini was hiding in the West and Scorpio appearing in the East. We had a tour of the circumpolar constellations ( those which are able to see all the year because they are close to the Polar Star) : Ursa Major , Ursa Minor, The Dragon , Cassiopeia.
From the Ursa Major, following the three stars, we went to Arturo , a big red star , which is located in the constellation of Bootes or the Oxen Shepherd. Close to it was the Corona Borealis and Hercules  constellations.

We also saw some summer constellations that were appearing on  the East, like the Lira with its  big green star Vega and the Northern Cross or The Swan , where the star was located Deneb  at the top of the cross and at Albireo the basses. Albireo is actually a double star, one of the stars is a golden one and the other is turquoise (although there were some discrepancies ) .

We could also observe some celestial objects of the Messier catalog : M81 and M82 galaxies in Ursa Major , M13 , the globular cluster, in Hercules, M52 a planetary nebula in Lyra

It was a great night.

Do not miss the pictures.

Night sky watching may the 30th 2014