Resources by Royal Observatory Greenwich

Scales of the Universe

Produced by the Royal Observatory Greenwich, this booklet discusses the scale of the Universe. Included is an online video that puts the age and size of the Universe into context. Concepts such as dark matter and dark energy are also briefly introduced. Questions and answers are included that test a student’s...

Searching for life on extrasolar planets

Produced by the Royal Observatory Greenwich, this booklet uses the context of life on extrasolar planets to introduce light absorption spectra. Included is an online video that discusses where we might find alien life and how we can search for it. Questions and answers are included that test a student’s...

Solar System Holiday

This resource, from the Royal Observatory Greenwich, is all about helping pupils get to know the solar system.

• There is a lively song and animation in a...

Solar System in a box

This resource, from the Royal Observatory Greenwich, is a video explaining an elegant method of creating a small model of the solar system, using very simple equipment.

Using a small torch and a transparent ball (for example from a...

Space rocks

This short video and accompanying worksheet explains where asteroids and meteoroids come from, what they are made from and how they may sometimes fall to Earth. It also looks at how comets are formed and the role they may have played in bringing water to Earth.

This...

Star and the H-R Diagram

This resource, from the Royal Observatory Greenwich, is a beautifully animated video giving a short overview of the life cycle of stars, but crucially how, from Earth, we can observe the different phases of star evolution by plotting all the...

Star trails and sidereal day

Produced by the Royal Observatory Greenwich, this booklet introduces the sidereal day and shows how star trials can be used to calculate the length of one sidereal day. Included in the booklet are instructions on how to create a star trial photograph using a DSLR or bridge camera. Supporting documents that help the...

Everything on Earth, with the exception of hydrogen and helium, was made in stars. The hydrogen and most of the helium in the universe were made when the universe was only a few minutes old. We and our Earth are star dust or, if you prefer, the nuclear waste of 8000 million years of stellar evolution. This is the...

Stellar Sat Nav

In these two activities, from the Royal Observatory Greenwich, students use bearings to plot constellations. They are then asked to think about what they represent.

The Higher Level file has more complex...

The Age of the Universe

This activity, from the Royal Observatory Greenwich, looks at Hubble’s law, whereby students use real data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey to plot a graph from which they can obtain the Hubble constant. Students then look at the possible sources of error in their data and use this to calculate the uncertainty in...