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Stargazing Lates at the Science Museum
11 October 2023
A group of students and postdoctoral researchers ran a series of interactive astrophysics themed drop-in activities at the “Science Museum Stargazing Lates” event. The Science Museum Lates are an after-hours event which includes many activities, talks, and special exhibits.
The team consisted of current and previous Astrophysics group members from UCL and Oxford: postdoctoral researchers Aayush Saxena (UCL/Oxford), Gareth Jones (Oxford), and Corentin Cadiou (previously at UCL, now at Lund), with UCL PhD students Claudia Muni, Mark Cunningham, and Lillian Guo.
The drop-in activity was centred around the James Webb Space Telescope. It included an interactive data viewer/explorer and an infrared camera. Visitors could look through the camera to understand how the JWST sees the universe. The activity also included an area dedicated to cosmological simulations, with an interactive tool to visualise the output of simulations.
The night was very busy. The Stargazing Lates event had over 2000 visitors in total, while the three UCL-led activities had a combined total of over 500-600 visitors over a 3-hour period.
Current Cosmoparticle PhD student Claudia Muni said: “The night was really fun! Everyone was very enthusiastic to learn about what we do on a daily basis to study the universe. Activities like these give us a chance to get out of our offices and connect with people, and seeing the amount of interest the event received was amazing.”
UCL/Oxford postdoc Aayush Saxena said: “It was really exciting talking about science with JWST and cosmological simulations with our enthusiastic audience. We were told that our drop in activity was one of the busiest of the night, which was really cool and is testament to the impact of astronomy!”
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