KISP visit to the Planetarium

We are happy and honored to host students from KISP Academy in our BCIS Planetarium. Our Cambridge Program Principle, Mr. Casey Barnes, kicked off the KISP Academy school visit with a rousing welcome speech. The students and teachers then got to enjoy our Fulldome content to learn about the universe, participate in a space quiz and enjoy some fun videos. They also learned about the night sky through our Sky show where the students and teachers got to learn how to find Saturn and Jupiter, and identify several constellations in the northern hemisphere winter night time sky.

Meanwhile, the weather outside was hot, but the sky was clear. Some students braved the heat to have a look at the sun safely through our specialized solar telescope. Our solar telescope, the Coronado PST, is used solely to observe the sun. It works by only transmitting a tiny sliver of the sun’s light, a specific red color emitted by hydrogen in the sun. This unique Hydrogen-Alpha emission allows us to see features on the sun’s surface (photosphere) such as sunspots, as well as the sun’s atmosphere (chromosphere) such as prominences, spicules, fibrils and flares.

We hope that the KISP teachers and students enjoyed the trip and were inspired by the sights and sounds they experienced at our BCIS Planetarium. We look forward to seeing them come to visit us again in the near future!