The night
sky has a new, albeit temporary, constellation: a mouse dubbed "Wee Sleekit
Beastie" by a Scottish schoolgirl.
The mouse
was the winning entry for a competition to design a new constellation for the International
Year of Astronomy (IYA 2009), which is this year.
The mouse
(whose named means "Ode to a Mouse") was created by Laura, a year 7
pupil at Dalmeny Primary School in Edinburgh. She received the award from Liz
Lochead, the Scottish Poet Laureate, in a ceremony in the planetarium at
Glasgow Science Centre on Tuesday.
In the
Constellation Project for IYA 2009, 8 schools across the country were linked to
an important astronomy site and selected a star whose distance in light years
corresponded to the site's age. For example, children at Coupar Angus Primary School were linked to the Mills Observatory in Dundee, built in 1935. Their star,
Aldebaran is 65 light-years away, so the light observed began shining a little
after the observatory opened.
The
children at the eight schools used the eight selected stars as the framework
for their constellations.
More than 200 pupils sent in entries.
At the
presentation ceremony, Lochead recited her poem "From a Mouse" and
the giant mouse constellation, and other winning entries, were projected on the
planetarium dome.
"Science
is fun and extremely fascinating. There is so much to learn. Astronomy is my
main interest now and I will stick with it for life I hope," Laura said.
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