Five bright sparks capture in-flight images of galaxy

Five Cork bright sparks captured images of a galaxy over 2.7 million light years away while cruising 36,000 feet above the Atlantic.

The five Coderdojo students used the wifi service on board the inaugural Aer Lingus Dublin to San Francisco flight on Wednesday to remotely control a telescope in Portola Valley, California.

The five students, lead by researcher Adrian Collins, of Cork Institute of Technology’s Blackrock Castle Observatory (CIT BCO), captured images of the Triangulum Galaxy in the night sky over California shortly before day break.

“To the naked eye it looks like a grey blob,” Matthew Mallon, 12, from White-church in Cork said.

“The telescope takes pictures in black and white and we use colour filters to tell us more about it,” he said.

The five students had a short window of live access to the robotic telescope as part of a education partnership known as Project Tara. They worked against the clock to photograph the Triangulum Galaxy and later presented the photograph to Mayor of San Francisco Ed Lee, who is due to receive a lesson in coding from the five students today.

“We can move the telescope remotely to look around the night sky to areas where we know there are galaxies. We are looking at star clusters and galaxies and using the colour filters to tell us more about the composition of what we are looking at,” Mr Collins said.

The five students, Áine Ellen O’Neill, 13, Ruth Whelan, 13, Emily Mary Ray, 13, Andrew Barret, 13, and Matthew Mallon will now code the image to create a game to share with San Francisco-based Coderdojo members as part of their five-day trip.

They are guests of Mayor Lee as part of a Cork San Francisco sister city delegation focused on developing technology links for future business.