Community Star Watch Evening: Comets and Meteors

Tuesday 6th November 2012

6pm until 8pm

People from the community and families from far and wide attended our first Community Star Watch evening for 2012. We have been running these meetings every month during the winter since 2009. Andy Gannon, a keen local astronomer and Allan Bell from Loughton Astronomical Society talked about comets and meteors. The evening started with Andrew Young, Stewards Chief Science Technician, making a comet in the lab. Comets are just dirty snowballs whizzing around the Sun, so he made ours using carbon, Lea and Perrins sauce , water and solid carbon dioxide. It looked just like a comet only a lot smaller. Comets can be about 10 km across. We played a fan across the surface, simulating the solar wind, and to our delight our comet formed the signature tail of vapour.

Extra chairs were brought in as the lab filled up with about 60 people, ages ranging from 5 to 70 years. Allan Bell talked about meteors which are re-named meteorites if they land on the Earth's surface. He talked about how scientists can track the meteor's path through the Earth's atmosphere using radio waves. We also learned how this signal can be used to monitor the changes in the upper reaches of the atmosphere. If you would like to see some meteors (shooting stars) a meteor shower is expected around the 18th November in the early evening. You should see about 3 meteors per minute. Andy Gannon talked about comets, what they are made of, where they come from and why they look like they do. He talked about famous comets and how they have been seen over hundreds of years and recorded in ancient texts and tapestries. We might be able to see a comet sometime in March 2013.

Because the sky was clouded over we could not take the telescopes outside but instead the children took part in a seasonal bonfire night activity, burning metal salts in a bunsen burner to see the flame change colour, indicating what happens in fireworks when you see the coloured sparks.

Geraldine Wright

Science Curriculum Development Manager