European Association for Astronomy Education

Once again in 2011 EAAE has launched Eratosthenes Experiment. This year was coordinated by Anna Artigas and Guido Robotti.

On June 21^st, 2011, school teachers and students from all over Europe made their measurements and launched the results on the EAAE's webpage of the project. Some teachers also participated on the videoconference promoted for schools to cooperate about the event.

Students measuring the shadow of a gnomon at Legnica, Poland.

Most schools, from Northern Europe to Southern Europe were able to measure the shadow of the Sun due to good weather conditions in most of Europe. Only Stafford Grammar School in the United Kingdom reported bad weather conditions.

A School Group measuring the shadow of a gnomon at Batalha, Portugal.

Nonetheless the measurement of average of Earth's perimeter was 39864.64 km, a measurement that has a 0.358% error compared to the accepted value of 40007.86 km for the meridional perimeter.

During the video conference that was controlled by Alexandre Costa and Jordi Delpeix Borrell, students from different schools shared their results and the motivation they had in participating this event. All of them showed the interest in participating next year.

A scene from the beginning of the videoconference with some of the participants.

Students had possibility of presenting pictures and some schools also presented videos they already had posted on YouTube about the event.

Sharing a YouTube video nearly at the end of the videoconference..

We hope next edition of Eratosthenes is even better.

Source: Daily Galaxy

An Unitary Triangle fit measurements of CP violation and rare decays. Image source: UTfit

Scientists of the MINOS experiment at the Department of Energy’s Fermi National AcceleratorLaboratory have announced the results from a search for a rare phenomenon, the transformation of muon neutrinos into electron neutrinos. The result is consistent with and significantly constrains a measurement reported 10 days ago by the Japanese T2K experiment, which could have implications for our understanding of the role that neutrinos may have played in the evolution of the universe. If muon neutrinos transform into electron neutrinos, neutrinos could be the reason that the big bang produced more matter than antimatter, leading to the universe as it exists today. (read more)

Source: ESA News

ESA’s XMM-Newton space observatory has watched a faint star flare up at X-ray wavelengths to almost 10 000 times its normal brightness. Astronomers believe the outburst was caused by the star trying to eat a giant clump of matter.

The flare took place on a neutron star, the collapsed heart of a once much larger star. Now about 10 km in diameter, the neutron star is so dense that it generates a strong gravitational field.

The clump of matter was much larger than the neutron star and came from its enormous blue supergiant companion star.(read more)