Workshop at Nehru Planetarium

No doubt star-gazing is an exhilarating experience. The mesmerising beauty of the night sky has always been a source of inspiration for story tellers, poets, philosophers and scientists.

Keeping this in mind, our teachers enrolled a group of students to participate in a workshop at the Nehru Planetarium on 28th July 2017. We departed from School at 8.50 a.m. and reached our destination by 9.20. 19 students from our School participated in this workshop accompanied l by two teachers, Mr. Pallab Roy and Ms. Chandrima Mukherjee. The students who participated in this workshop were: Vridhi Chugh (VII-A), Harmanjot (VII-A), Honnish (VII-B), Diksha (VII-B), Hardik Gogia (VII-C), Harleen (VII-C), Vatsal (VII-D),Gunika (VII-D), Meenakshi (VII-E), Saransh (VII-E), Akshat (VIII-A), Riya Bajpai (VIII-A), Anushka (VIII-B), Debarpan (VIII-B), Aryan (VIII-C), Vani (VIII-D), Harshit (VIII-D), Dhaani Chuchre (VIII-E) and Sakshi Singh (VIII-E).

We walked through the gallery filled with interesting models on display. There were models of stars, constellations and the solar system. Thereon we settled in the hall for a show. There were students from other schools present too. Before the show started, the director of the Planetarium, Dr. N. Ratnashree briefed us about what we were going to see.

The show began at around 9.40 a.m. We were told about many stars which are visible to the the naked eye, such as Sirius, Dhruv Tara etc. However we are not able to see them because of the rising levels of light pollution in big cities such as Delhi. We were also told that counting the number of visible stars can estimate the level of light pollution in the city! Various constellations such as Orion, Ursa Major, Scorpious, Cassiopeia, Ursa Minor, Taurus, Gemini, Aries etc. were talked about during the workshop. It was very informative. The show ended at around 11.30 a.m. We were then engaged in a brief discussion about the different stars and constellations that we had learned about.

Ms. Chandrima Mukherjee.