We feel that the issue  of climate change can be overwhelming for many young people, and indeed adults, and we wanted to offer tools and ideas to allow participants to enact real and meaningful change in their everyday lives.

Using our unique mobile planetarium resource and our expertise in astronomy, we chose to build our programme around the concept of light pollution. With specific Earth observation satellites, such as NASA’s Black Marble, focussing on the Earth at night, we felt that this concept fit well with the programme deliverables. Light pollution is often a little known but relatable concept and an issue whereby everyone has the potential to make a positive change – even a small one – at home.

We planned to use the full-dome NSC film “We are Guardians”,  shown during ASDC training, to underpin the learning in our programme and we were able to take our mobile planetarium to participants and allow all to experience this. We also wanted to compliment the viewing of this with a hands-on interactive workshop exploring the themes identified.

“Both the planetarium and workshop provided excellent contexts for learning. The visits were really helpful for situating learning we have done about both space and natural disasters within a Scottish context. I feel this made the learning more meaningful and children will then subsequently be able to talk more about what they have been learning.”

Figure 1 Inside Planetarium

Figure 2 Outside Planetarium

We planned to deliver our programme mainly in schools in our local area, with priority on those in remote or rural areas, or those in more deprived areas (identified using the SIMD index).

A main aim of our project was to highlight the issue of light pollution and to encourage all participants adapt their own practices around outdoor lighting for the better.

From the various types of feedback collated we know that we have provided tools and ideas for participants to enact real change and we have raised awareness of light pollution across our local area and beyond.

As a small team of only two STEM Education staff we are proud that we have managed to reach such a large number of participants to date – 9,690 in total across Scotland. We have recorded a total of 13,400 interaction hours thanks to the depth and breadth of our content and post visit activities to encourage further engagement.

“Planetarium was a great hit and something we could never replicate ourselves in the classroom. The workshop was also informative and had a good mix of information and activities.”

“I loved both aspects and so did the kids! Both very engaging in different ways. Thank you!”

Following the success of the Our World from Space programme we hope to create some further follow-on content to add to our STEM outreach offering and hope to re-engage with the schools we have already reached with more sessions designed to build upon their learning and engagement so far. The support of ASDC and relevant partners has really helped to put our small charity on the map in terms of high quality STEM Outreach and we look forward to continuing to work with ASDC on future initiatives.

We want to thank the ASDC, The UK Space Agency, NERC and Laura from ONData for their continued support, ideas, funding and training throughout the programme.

“Practical activities, with interesting resources which fully engaged the children. The ‘wow’ factor of the planetarium and the very engaging film presented there. In depth knowledge of the presenters.”