Year 11 Physics: The Universe

This Planetarium excursion is specifically designed for VCE physics students. It combines the Capturing the Cosmos planetarium film with Ticket to the Universe, a live presented planetarium show. It is designed to give students a holistic look at how scientists investigate and explore the Universe. 

Students will experience

• Capturing the Cosmos, a Planetarium film that looks at how we learn about the Universe through astronomy research and technology.
• A showcase of research carried out by astronomers across Australia, and some of the incredible innovative telescopes that have enabled new discoveries.
• A live tour of the night sky, calibrated to Melbourne at the time of year of the visit, highlighting features such as stars, planets and other galaxies visible from Earth.
• A live, presenter-led journey from Earth to the depths of the Universe, looking at planets, stars, galaxies and quasars along the way.

Students will learn

• How telescopes allow us to examine light in order to learn about our Universe including stars and quasars, by using different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum.
• About Australian all-sky astrophysics, including the SkyMapper telescope in New South Wales and the Murchison Wide-field Array (MWA) in Western Australia.
• That Earth is surrounded by hundreds of satellites that help us in our daily lives, such as the GPS satellites.
• That the Earth is part of a solar system containing planets, asteroids, dwarf planets and the Oort cloud, and is situated in the Milky Way galaxy.
• About some of the surveys of distant galaxies that have allowed us to understand the structure of the Universe.
• How the Murchison Wide-field Array allows us to study origins of matter through the cosmic microwave background radiation.

Related links

• Expansion of space
• Looking at the sky in a different light: Years 9–11
• Evolution of the Universe: Year 11
• CAASTRO