Tuning into the universe
Scifest Africa has its own space programme especially designed for aspiring astronomers looking for a hands-on experience. Visitors who want to go beyond the fascinating lecture series on space matters should consider some of the space related workshops and other activities.
Starting with the very young space fan, those from grades four to six, the South African National Space Agency (SANSA) will organise a satellite building competition. In this free workshop, children will learn what a satellite is, what they are used for and what goes into building a great satellite.
Then the challenge – given the limited time available, can they build their own satellite?
Staying with satellites, SANSA is offering a workshop called “Electronic circuits in space” where participants prepare to be a satellite engineer and learn all about how to connect electronic resistors in series and in parallel. They can also learn what happens when electronic circuits and other delicate pieces of equipment are exposed to solar radiation.
Journey To The Stars is an amazing, free experience in the StarLab, an inflatable planetarium designed to introduce visitors to the basic principles of astronomy. Children have fun as they enter space and discover our Universe, the Milky Way galaxy and our solar system.
If the planetarium is not real enough for you, and especially if you loved StarLab, the Star Party is one of the highlights of the programme.
Scifest Africa and the Rhodes University Astronomy Society (AstroSoc) invite you to a Star Party! Visitors can get their hands dirty in arts and crafts devised in the far reaches of the cosmos as well as space themed space games with prizes that are out of this world.
Best of all, weather permitting, everyone has an opportunity to do their own stargazing through a telescope set up by AstroSoc.
The South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO) will hold two workshops. The first titled “A Hitchhikers guide to the universe” takes place every day and is designed with high school pupils from grade nine to 12 in mind.
It is a fast-paced, interactive journey from Grahamstown across the universe where participants will see exploding stars, black holes and cannibal galaxies.
They will also observe stimulating demonstrations and then conduct the experiments themselves.
The second SAAO workshop, the “Solar system and the telescope” invites participants to take a trip through space and paint the depth of the solar system. To successfully explore the objects in space you need a bigger eye than the ones you have, a telescope is such a “big eye”.
Participants will make a model of a telescope and learn what real telescopes can teach you about the universe.
The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) radio telescope, currently under construction near Carnarvon in the Northern Cape, will be offering two workshops designed to teach participants about radio waves.
The two workshops entitled “Colour by numbers” and “RFI Detective” explain how radio waves travel through space, just like light, and can be intercepted by radio telescopes.
In the “Colour by Numbers” workshop you will hear that astronomers then convert these radio waves into pictures that look like photographs.
However, this must be impossible because radio waves are invisible! How do they do it? Join scientists from SKA SA to find out how scientists make “radio pictures” of the objects in the Universe. Then, using your imagination, complete your own radio picture.
In the “RFI Detective” workshop you will learn how mobile telephones and petrol vehicles can interfere with weak signals from the universe.
It is important to have very large sensitive radio telescopes to detect these signals but it is also important to be able to detect interference from ground based sources. For this reason you will need to use your RFI detector badge to find out where the interference is coming from.