1. Astronomy Ireland School Visits

We are currently in the 2nd year of our very successful School Education Programme and we now have a team of Education Officers in place who travel around the country to schools (primary and secondary) giving fascinating talks on astronomy. The talks are comprised of a highly visual PowerPoint presentation lasting approximately 40 minutes, which is both fun and of course educational, with time for a Q&A session at the end. Talks can be tailored to suit each groups needs (age, knowledge level, particular interests, etc.) and talks for junior groups can be tailored to be more visually appealing with less detailed content, and more time for questions.

Our aim is to 'Build a Science Culture for Ireland' and with your help we can get astronomy established as a more widely-studied subject in the Irish curriculum, getting more and more young people learning about and enjoying this fantastic subject as a result.

If you know somebody who might be interested in a school visit, have children yourself, are a teacher or would be willing to drop some information into your local school please email edu@astronomy.ie or call our Education Officer on (01) 847 0777 for a full information pack about the programme.

Alternatively, log on to www.astronomy.ie/outreach for more information or click the link below to book a visit.

BOOK A TALK

2. Summer Public Lecture

'Black Holes, The Large Hadron Collider and The God Particle' is the title of our June Public Lecture which takes place on Monday, June 14th, at 8pm. Trinity College will be a cosmological hotspot on this night when Dr. Cormac O' Raifeartaigh of Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT) delivers this fascinating talk discussing black holes, future experiments at the controversial Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN and the elusive God Particle.

This is promising to be one of our biggest talks to date this year and pre-booking is advisable to avoid disappointment. For more information about this fascinating lecture click HERE. To book tickets simply click the link below or call us on (01) 847 0777. A DVD is available to order online and you can pre-order today.

BOOK TICKETS ORDER DVD

3. Phoenix Mars Lander Officially Dead

NASA has confirmed that its Phoenix Mars Lander has not survived the Martian Winter and is now officially 'dead' having suffered serious ice damage to its solar panels. Attempts to contact the lander via the Odyssey orbiter which "flew over the Phoenix landing site 61 times" last week have proved unsuccessful. Phoenix touched down on Martian soil in May 2008 and since then has had a string of mission successes including the confirmation and analysis of underground deposits of water ice, and the discovery of soil chemistry with significant implications for life; Phoenix even observed falling snow on the Red Planet. Fuk Li, manager of the Mars Exploration Progam at NASA said of the fallen lander "The Phoenix spacecraft succeeded in its investigations and exceeded its planned lifetime. Although its work is finished, analysis of information from Phoenix's science activities will continue for some time to come". To read more on this story click HERE.