Students from Year 6 visited the Sydney Observatory, recently. This excursion gave us lots of knowledge on this term’s Science unit, Space and Our Solar System. Once we arrived, we began our tour by splitting into three groups, before beginning our activities.
In one of the activities, we were guided into a small room where we sat below a dome-shaped screen with the sky projected on it. We looked at the sun in the day and fast-forwarded the sky to see the stars. We looked at the moon, planets and lots of constellations visible that night. The guide also forwarded to next June to show how the seasons change, as the sun was much lower in winter than summer, making it a lot colder.
The next activity was in the dome. We walked up a high set of stairs, to a large telescope facing towards the sun. We were all fascinated when the guide just simply pulled a lever to open the dome, to see the sky. Through a telescope, we could see the sun and we also did an activity that involved timing with a stopwatch.
Finally, we entered a room with a photo projected onto a screen. It was taken by the Hubble telescope and showed a cluster of galaxies. Later, we viewed the solar system through an app on the iPads provided. We used a colourful box, which through the iPad could be turned into a planet in our solar system. It was fun to experiment with these boxes and use them as props for funny photos.
After our visit to 'the stars', we headed to Barrangaroo for a fun and relaxing afternoon, and we even got a glimpse of Prince Harry!
Overall, we had an amazing day, filled with excitement, fun and lots of learning.
