Dark Skies

A group of our senior pupils participated in a “Dark Sky” event organised by the Royal Observatory in Craigengillan Estate on Friday 19 March. Our pupils are involved in an initiative to build an astronomical observatory in the Estate, taking advantage of its situation at the northern edge of Galloway Forest Park, which has been awarded a “Dark Sky” designation by the International Dark Sky Association and is the first in Europe to achieve this status. During the evening our pupils were taken on a grand tour of the night skies in a planetarium, found out what comets were made of, and handled meteorites, which were four and a half billion years old. The night was overcast so they didn’t get to use telescopes to view the stars and planets, but they made very good contacts with Renfrewshire Astronomical Society and the astronomers from the Royal Observatory who will be a great help as our own observatory project develops.