Irish astronomer wins prestigious award for children's project

AN AMATEUR Irish astronomer and artist has been awarded a prestigious prize for opening up the wonders of the universe to schoolchildren.

Deirdre Kelleghan, who lives in Bray, Co Wicklow, is part of a team that designed the Universe Awareness (Unawe) site.

The website has won Science magazine’s Online Resources in Education (Spore) prize. Science magazine is the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Ms Kelleghan’s Deadly Moons project, which she brings around to schools is designed to teach children about the wonders of the universe through images of the moons of the solar system including our own.

Using pictures from satellites such as Galileo which produced images of Jupiter’s moons and Cassini, which produced images of Saturn, she gets schoolchildren to draw their own pictures.

She said the word “deadly” is part of the vernacular of children.

The Deadly Moons project is now incorporated into the website and has been transposed so that it works in many countries.

Ms Kelleghan says she encourages children’s imaginations by talking about moons that may have life on them including Jupiter’s moon Europa and Saturn’s Enceladus. “I let their imaginations go wild,” she says.

“I’m very tuned in with kids, particularly kids from the inner city who aren’t used to getting this kind of stuff. It’s not like learning about astronomy in a stuffy way.”