Cassini Scientist for a Day Competition 2009

Would you like to be a scientist for a day, and use the Cassini spacecraft which is orbiting Saturn?

The are a huge number of areas around Saturn that Cassini can be used to study in detail - the storms in Saturn's atmosphere, the rings that are divided into 33 different sections, and any one of the 61 moons that orbit the planet!

Scientists working on the Cassini Mission have chosen three key targets. These are:

• Saturn and its rings
• Tethys and its effect on the outer-most E-ring of Saturn
• Titan

Your challenge is to decide which of these is the most scientifically valuable, and make your case in 500 words. The competition is open to all students at school or college in the UK and Ireland, between the ages of 11 to 18.

Deadline for competition entries is the 30th October!

Full details, including links to the YouTube videos that will help you decide on your preferred target, are available at the Queen Mary University of London website.

Chance to observe with Gemini!

Would your school students like to use one of the biggest telescopes in the world?!

The Gemini Observatory consists of a pair of identical telescopes, one in Chile and one in Hawai'i, and each one has a massive 8 meter diameter mirror! They are positioned on the planet so that the two telescopes can between them observe almost any part of the night sky. A quarter of the funding for Gemini is from the UK.

If your school would like to win the chance to remotely observe with Gemini, all you need to do is send an outline of what you would like to observe and why it is interesting (maximum 500 words) to ukgemini@astro.ox.ac.uk by the 16th of October, 2009! The competition is open to all students from UK schools and science clubs in years 11, 12 and 13.

For more details, please see the competition website.