Secondary Schools Poster Project

Every year in February, the group holds a public outreach event, called Stars and Snowdrops, at the Observatory site at Hanwell Castle. Over the past few years, this event has seen over 1200 visitors in a weekend, a large percentage of them being young people.

To introduce the Observatory and star party evenings to local secondary schools, we would like to invite them to participate in the Solar System Poster project. Schools are invited to submit posters made by any year group or science club to be exhibited at the Stars and Snowdrops event. Any number of these can be submitted by each school.

We anticipate good media coverage of the event, as in previous years. The posters will be displayed, over the Stars and Snowdrops weekend, in a marquee in the Observatory grounds with the names and year groups of the schools who made them. It is envisaged that this project will make an excellent educational partner to a primary school project which has been designed to draw in younger age pupils who will be involved in the Planet Parade which ran for the first time in 2009 and consisted of the making of planetary models.

While this is not a competition, all schools which participate will be invited to a star party evening especially for their school, where up to 20 students will have the opportunity to use the telescopes and have a guided tour of some of the objects within our solar system and beyond. If your school would like to take part in this project, please let me know and we will be happy to give further information or astronomical assistance if needed.

The posters should be at least A2 size, on the theme of The Solar System. This is a very wide topic and can be covered at many different levels depending on the age of the students. The posters can show anything from the nature of the solar system, its origins, through orbital mechanics, exploration, classical mythology or any aspect of our solar system of the students’ own choosing.

How to take part

If your school would like to take part in this project, please e-mail us via the contact form below and we will be happy to give further information or astronomical assistance if needed.