Science

Space and Astronomy

VSSEC has installed a radio telescope at our observatory at Tallarook, approximately 85 km north of Melbourne.

This telescope is exclusively for the use of Victorian Government Secondary School students. To the best of our knowledge this only radio telescope in the world which is devoted entirely to school students. There are university radio telescopes and school student access programs such as PULSE@Parkes but this is the first radio telescope explicitly for school students. 

Our Space and Astronomy elective students were able to take control of the telescope, watching it move live on the webcam and collect radiowave mapping data to form an image of a supernova remnant. Unfortunately, our field of view seemed to be in the centre of the supernova and we ended up with a mostly white map image. (Cover image)

The students were able to identify the peaks in energy that signal that the telescope has locked onto an object and discussed how pixels are formed based on the intensity of energy being measured by the telescope in that measurement.

A big thanks to the students who leant me a hand in decoding the instructions when I thought I may have "broken it"! We troubleshooted and went back a few steps and away it went.

Stay tuned for more details of the Astronomy nights, run by Mornington Peninsula Astronomy Association, in Term 2 and 3 which will be advertised through Compass. These will be great nights for students to view Space with an optical telescope and learn about the objects in the night sky.

Ms Kristianna Davis

Year 9 Space and Astronomy Teacher