Planetarium visit- Napier's Holt Planetarium

Yeasterday Rooms 13 and 17 visited the Holt Planetarium as part of this term's 'Explaining the Unknown' Inquiry topic.  Mr Gary Sparks led a discussion on the night sky, explaining the history of constellations; using stars for navigation; and the history and future of the universe.  He said Antares, a red super-giant star in the constellation of Scorpio, was big enough to enclose Earth if it was in the same place as the sun!   Lucky it's not.  Also, if we travelled as fast as the fastest man-made object, something which can orbit the Earth in an hour, it would still take 75,000 years to reach Alpha Centauri, the closest star to Earth other than our own sun.  Light from Alpha Centauri takes four years to reach us, travelling at a fraction under 300,000km/second.  So humans have a long way to catch up to that!