See a Supernova!

A supernova can be seen in the sky with good binoculars or a telescope.  The star blew up recently in M101, a faint galaxy in the Messier catalogue.  The supernova is named SN2011fe.  At magnitude 11, it is not bright, but compare what you see with a low power image of M101 - the supernova will be just like ‘spot the difference’.  A star chart is given to help you locate M101 and a photo to show the area to look:-

Incredible results: Starlearner student achieves highest result in all of the country!

Incredible results all round - so chuffed to report that ALL of our Starlearner Distance Learner's achieved a grade B and above! 

Not only that, special mention needs to go to Liz Walker, who completed the Starlearner distance learning course and came top in the whole country. 

Liz can be seen writing up her controlled assessment practicals in the glorious setting of Thoresby Hall - one of Warner Leisure Hotels flagship hotels, which we had booked for the day. Liz decided to use the floor so that she could lay out her mountain of notes and photographs! 

Congratulations Liz and to all of the Starlearner Distance Learning students who've worked so hard - it was totally worth it and we're very proud of all our STAR LEARNERS!

Lanzarote viewing...

Little Miss M was in Lanzarote last week and saw this brilliant image in a restaurant taken by none other than NASA. Such a good picture of the island. She was happy to report back that there were plenty of miles of untouched, dark beaches for viewing but the best overall place that she saw was Ermita de Las Nieves, a small church that over looks Famara in the north of the island. Super dark for super viewing.

Image courtesy of NASA

Google celebrates the Lunar Eclipse

Did you view the lunar eclipse last night? I hope you all saw a glimpse of it despite the not so perfect conditions over here in the UK... it only ever occurs on the night of a full moon when the Earth, Sun and Moon are all in alignment and the Earth blocks the Sun's rays from reaching the Moon. Viewers all over the world enjoyed seeing the Moon turn a stunning red colour last night when it looked more like Mars than our Moon!
Google have celebrated it with their time lapse forming one of their 'o's' check it out here.

Lunar Eclipse from Tenerife - Getty Images

NASA image picks of the month!

Well it's been very hectic here at Starlearner but everything is going well for the students and I thought it was high time that we profiled some more of NASA's amazing imagery...

Sunset over South America taken by Expedition 25 Crew

Lightening rages near Endeavour at the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center - Bill Ingalls for NASA

A T-38 Jet, with astronauts training inside, is caught silhouetted against the sun in flight - Terry Virls for NASA

NASA Engineer Ernie Wright looks on as the first six flight ready James Webb Space Telescope's primary mirror segments are prepped before final testing.

David Higginbotham for NASA/MSFC

Endeavour is docked at the International Space Station during its 14 day mission.

NASA

The whole month of images can be viewed by clicking here

Good luck Starlearner students!

Well, your hard work has been done and all of the controlled assessments have now been filtered through me and sent off to the moderators.  I have piles of big envelopes building up from schools and centres around the country so I'm off to the Edexcel Head Office on Saturday to prepare for the moderation process.  To all of the distance learners who are receiving their trial exams today - Good luck. I hope they go really well!

View the exoplanet Cancri e for the next two months...

In the news today more details were revealed of the 'super-exotic' exoplanet called Cancri e. It is 8 times as large as Earth and is the densest, most solid planet found anywhere to date. A human would weigh three times as much on the planet! 
Scientists believe that temperatures on the planet could reach 2700 degrees Celsius so not quite right for human inhabitation but as Josh Winn, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said: "it is the perfect laboratory to test theories of planet formation, evolution and survival."
It was found using the Doppler method and I'm going to blog about that in my next post.
Now whilst Cancri e is 40 light years away and not visible through our telescopes, its host star, 55 Cancri A, can be observed over the next two months by naked eyes on a dark clear night or using binoculars or a telescope, it is an extrasolar planetary system found in the constellation Cancer the Crab and here's a map to help guide you in...

This image found here illustrates the positioning of the extra-solar system in comparison to ours to give you a feel of the positioning...