Cai Stoddard-Jones, a PhD student at Cardiff University and member of the Comet Chasers team tells us more..

After an absence of two years, the annual National Eisteddfod returned to celebrate all things Welsh: it consists of competitions in poetry, literature, composing music, singing, dancing, art - I could go on, but you get the drift! This year, it was hosted in Tregaron, Ceredigion at the beginning of August (as is tradition).

Amidst the rows of arts and shops, lies the Pentref Gwyddoniaeth (Science Village) – where nerds gather to engage kids about their area in STEM, be it at university stands, talks, or just as a mad scientist blowing stuff up! Among these was a Comet Chasers’ table, in a small hut which became unbearably hot.

Our Comet Chasers project focuses on using the 'Wow' factor of Space, particularly comets, to inspire children in their learning across the curriculum. It links schools with professional researchers and amateur astronomers around the world. Schools take images through the Faulkes Telescope Project (using the research-grade robotic telescopes in the Las Cumbres Observatory worldwide network). If these images are used by researchers, the schools are credited on published scientific articles – how exciting is that?!

We also provide supporting educational resources and hands-on experiments. We brought some of those for our stand.

On our stand: meteorites older than the Earth, IR cameras to facilitate experiments in different wavelengths making the invisible visible, and what drew most attention, would you believe it - a big, plush penguin! ‘What’s with the penguin?’ was probably the most common question. Well, this penguin was part of an experiment called ‘rotato’, and it was, in fact, our fake comet! (Our thanks to the Royal Astronomical Society for providing the funding to allow us to buy display size equipment and publicity materials!)

The rotato is an experiment to explain how astronomers can deduce a comet or asteroid’s shape, colour, size, rotational period and much more. Different colour surfaces reflect light differently, as do different shapes, sizes and textures!

To show this, we use our proxy comet – the penguin! The penguin spins on a turntable and a webcam detects how much light is being reflected off the penguin as it spins and plots a graph which is called a light-curve, and this is exactly what astronomers do to analyse asteroids and comets. (We also regularly rotate potatoes which look like asteroids – hence the ro-tato!) The curve is highest when the penguin reflects most light (the white belly facing the camera), and lowest for the black part. We even got to make a light-curve of a ‘real’ comet – a 3D printed model of comet 67P, kindly provided by Geraint Jones, who is leading the Comet Interceptor Mission.

We’ve got smaller rotato kits available for loan too – you can investigate light and reflectivity yourself by producing light curves of any object you have available. Visit cometchasers.org/home/rotato for more information.

The second picture shows Comet 67P on the rotato. A light-curve was created from the intensity of the light reflected off it and into the webcam. Despite the dodgy experimental conditions, it turned out great.

In addition to the hands-on exhibits, we asked children if they wanted to assist with some real science and request their own images. We gave the choice of 4 comet/asteroid missions:

·         C/2014 UN271 – the big one

·         73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 – the fragmenting one

·         29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 1 – the active one

·         Asteroid system Didymos and Dimorphos – DART Mission’s target, so helping NASA save the planet!

Picture 3: Map showing the comprehensive spread over Wales of the schools whose pupils submitted image request forms. We hope this will encourage schools to get involved with the project too.

We received a total of 59 requests from 40+ different schools in Wales and beyond (we even had students from a Gaelic school in Glasgow and a school in Southern France!). Unsurprisingly, DART and ‘helping NASA’ was the most popular mission, so much so we had to stop taking requests for it.

The requests were grouped up into similar dates and submitted to LCO’s queue. Many of the observations have now been completed and we’re making them available for everyone to see at cometchasers.org/home/your-observations !

Picture 4 (Gif) showing asteroid Didymos taken on 01/09/2022 as requested by Tola, Lili and Dyfan at the Eisteddfod.

Children at the Eisteddfod seemed really interested in comets and excited at the prospect of being part of real-life science. I’m looking forward to developing more Comet Chasers Welsh language resources and we will absolutely be back there next year!

Diolch Eisteddfod, mi welai chi blwyddyn nesaf!

Know a school that would like to get involved with Comet Chasers?

Contact Cai Stoddard-Jones, cai@cometchasers.org for more information!