EU Universe Awareness (EU-UNAWE) is pleased to announce that its astronomy news service for children, called Space Scoop, will now be working in partnership with the South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO).
Space Scoop, which was launched in February 2011, already translates press releases produced by the European Southern Observatory (ESO), the NASA Chandra X-ray Observatory and Europlanet into child friendly language. Now, EU-UNAWE is thrilled to welcome SAAO to the Space Scoop family, as it offers a perfect opportunity to introduce young children to the professional astronomical facilities in South Africa.
The jewel in SAAO’s facilities is the 11-metre Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) – the largest optical telescope in the Southern Hemisphere. SAAO also operates many smaller telescopes that make valuable contributions to our understanding of the Universe.
For example, in the latest Space Scoop, SAAO’s 1-metre telescope provided essential data to an international team of astronomers in their hunt for exoplanets. Critically, the geographical location of South Africa filled the time gap between the other telescopes used in the research, which are based in Australia and Chile. This gave astronomers 24-hour access to the night sky to search for exoplanets using a technique that requires a very rare alignment of stars.
Read more in Space Scoop.