Earlier in the year, our Sixth Form and Year 11 Physics students visited the Observatory at Durham University as part of the university's outreach programme. The thought-provoking experience was so popular that Mr Lawton, our STEM Co-ordinator, working with Durham University's "Physics into Schools' Ambassador, Sam Watson, organised an in-school event which saw a portable planetarium erected in our gym.

Thanks to this amazing portable facility, pictured here, over 130 students in Years 7-12 were able to consider the vast size of the universe and the Milky Way through a variety of learning activities. They also looked at the relative distance of the planets and learned how to identify some of the most well-known star constellations such as Orion and the Big Dipper.

Mr Lawton said, "Our students thoroughly enjoyed the experience and I was really impressed with the type of questions they asked. The activities stimulated high level critical thinking skills and really appealed to our students' inquisitive minds. The event has certainly fascinated them and resulted in a keen interest in astronomy."

An additional activity involved students planning the contents of a space capsule that would be launched in the event of a major threat to the Earth. This provoked some excellent debates about the types of things that should be included, but even more so about the things that should be left out.