California dreaming... as Irish pupils get to stargaze

Irish students will soon be surfing to California to peer into deep space... without leaving the country.

The TARA project is an initiative at the Cork Institute of Technology Blackrock Castle Observatory, where students will use the internet to control robotic telescopes in the US state.

The newly-installed telescope at Ormondale School in Portola Valley on the outskirts of the San Francisco Bay Area is the first of an array in California that will see another two schools with telescopes and an observatory joining up with TARA. It is planned to eventually have up to 10 telescopes involved.