DCAL release 60-second Planetarium video

Armagh Observatory, 17 September 2015. As part of its commitment to support the visitor-centre and educational offering of the Armagh Observatory and Planetarium (AOP), the Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure (DCAL) has released a 60-second video to promote the education, learning and outreach activities of the Observatory and Planetarium.

The video (also available from youtube http://youtu.be/lpHKFuBoiNk), which was released in September 2015, shows different aspects of the organization's educational work and an important strand of the Observatory's programme of Science in the Community, that is, the Observatory's involvement in the international Universe Awareness (UNAWE) programme and the European Union component of this project, EU-UNAWE. This was a Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) supported by EU funds under Grant Agreement 26335 (see http://uk.unawe.org/and links therein).

Mark Bailey, Director of the Observatory, explained: "The EU-UNAWE programme, which ran from 2012 to 2014, had the broad aim of using the beauty and grandeur of the Universe to inspire young children and encourage them to develop an interest in the so-called STEM subjects: science, technology, engineering and mathematics. It also sought to explain Earth's place in space and introduce children and young people to the idea of global citizenship and tolerance at a crucial stage of their educational development."

The new DCAL video highlights the work of the education staff in the Planetarium, showing them explaining meteorites and other Planetarium exhibits, and key concepts in astronomy and space science using rocket launches and a visit to the Star Theatre. It also includes clips from an earlier DCAL Creativity Month video (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJ2zs_is9rI&feature=youtu.be), which shows Observatory staff actively engaging children from a local primary school with the Human Orrery and the scale model of the solar system in the Astropark.

For links to these and other videos about the Armagh Observatory, see http://star.arm.ac.uk/movies/videos.htm, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dDGLGtjM6A and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pb6RNtmTw_0.

Further detailed information about the Observatory and Planetarium can be found at http://www.discovernorthernireland.com/Armagh-Observatory-Armagh-P3286, http://star.arm.ac.uk/virtualvisit/ and the websites http://star.arm.ac.uk/ and http://www.armaghplanet.com.

For further information please contact: Mark Bailey at the Armagh Observatory, College Hill, Armagh, BT61 9DG. Tel.: 028-3752-2928; FAX: 028-3752-7174; mebarm.ac.uk; URL: http://climate.arm.ac.uk

Last Revised: 2015 September 17th