On March 30, 90 students from the Aquinas American school, located in Pozuelo, came to ESAC, together with 4 of their teachers with a clear goal: To discover the active processes that take place on the Sun's surface.

The students came in two groups. The first one arrived to ESAC at 9:30 AM, with 55 students in their 4th year of ESO (Secondary). The Scientific Case that they decided to investigate was about the Solar Mass Ejections and their impact on our daily life. The second group arrived to ESAC at 11:30 AM, with 35 students in their second year of ESO (Secondary). In this case, their favourite Scientific Case was the study of the Solar rotation.

When the the group arrived, they took a seat in the CESAR conference room where they were warmly welcomed by the CESAR team and they had the chance to ask those questions more important for them that had come up in the classrooms when watching the videos generated by the CESAR team. These videos were sent to the school once they had decided to start the CESAR Space-Science-Experience.

In both cases, after the questions time, the groups were divided into two: the explorers and the researchers.

The group of explorers went to discover more about some of the most relevant ESA space exploration missions as they walked close to their mock-ups guided by the CESAR team. The group of researchers started to analyse the information given by the CESAR team about the Sun. They were Sun images collected at different moments of a day or at several consecutive days. The group in the 4th year of ESO were given images of the Sun collected by the SOHO satellite using a coronagraph. The group of students in the 2nd year of ESO were given images of the Sun collected with the CESAR solar telescope using an H-alpha filter, which is based at ESAC.

It was fascinating to see how the students made their own calculations and corrected themselves on their original hypothesis about the Sun period and the solar storm speed.

The students had the chance to touch a Churymov-Gerasimenko replica and to test the resistance of the Arianne rockets panels, get closer to the space antennae used to contact with the ESA satellites to send them instructions and receive their scientific data and also to know about the most relevant discoveries and curiosities related to the Rosetta, SOHO and XMM-Newton mission, among others.

Here are some of the pictures of the Aquinas American School students of the 4th year of ESO at ESAC:

Here are some of the pictures of the Aquinas American School students of the second year of ESO at ESAC:

Hey! do not forget to send us your Abstracts explaining to us your research findings and what has fascinated you the most. For the CESAR team it has been a pleasure to investigate together with you!

See you soon!