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| 8 May 2026 | |
| School News |
The anatomy club started again this term with the dissection of a sheep’s kidney. The students began with an external inspection, then made a sharp incision all the way round to open up the organ. This was quite tricky as the out membrane is quite tough. Once made, the students could see the cortex, medulla, pelvis and renal pyramid. Some drops of Hydrogen Peroxide were added to show the position of the collecting ducts which appeared as trails of tiny bubbles. Finally, the students made slides using thin sections of the kidney to examine under a microscope.
Earlier this term Year 7 & Year 13 and their parents used the new school telescope at Ally Pally to look at the Moon, Jupiter, Jupiter’s moons & Venus.
The scope is so powerful we could see the craters clearly on the Moon and the stripes of Jupiter’s surface. We will be looking to enhance the power of the telescope even more in coming months by adding an additional lens and a digital camera module to improve photos. Watch this space…
Note that the photos below of the Moon, Jupiter and 4 of its moons and Venus, don’t do justice to what we saw through the telescope on Wednesday – as it’s difficult to take pictures when holding a phone close to the telescope lens!
Our future plans involve getting photos of Mars, Saturn, distant galaxies and visits to Hampstead Observatory & the Royal Observatory
Our astronomers researched their favourite moon or spacecraft. There are lots to choose from in our solar system and many of them are weird and wonderful.
Miranda was named after Prospero in William Shakespeare’s play The Tempest. Miranda is known to be the ‘Frankenstein’ moon because it looks like it was pieced together from parts that didn’t quite merge. With about 500 km in diameter, it is only one-seventh as large as Earth’s moon, a size that is unlikely considering that Miranda supports so much tectonic activity. Miranda’s giant fault canyons are as much as 12 times as deep as the Grand Canyon. Due to its low gravity and large cliffs, if a rock dropped off the edge of the highest cliff, it would take a full 10 minutes for it to reach the very bottom.
Miranda, Year 7
Titania was discovered in 1787 by British astronomer William Herschel. Titania is Uranus’ largest moon and is about 1,000 miles in diameter. The troughs break the crust in two directions, an indication of some tectonic extension of Titania’s crust. Titania was named after the queen of fairies in William Shakespeare’s 16th century play A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Sadie, Year 7
Juice is an ESA-led mission launched in 2023 to study Jupiter and its 3 large ocean-bearing moons; Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa – for potential habitability. It’s short for JUpiter ICy moons Explorer however, the agency has since simplified the name to JUICE for standard use. While the moons are the stars of the show, Juice is also looking for answers to major mysteries about Jupiter itself. Juice is a massive, 3 – axis stabilised spacecraft designed to survive the solar system’s most extreme conditions and it was built with a carbon – fibre inner structure.
Milla, Year 7
Kerberos is one of Pluto’s 5 moons, and it has an almost circular orbit. Kerberos was first discovered in 2011 and is covered in mainly water ice. In July 2015 the New Horizon spacecraft flew past it and captured the closest (but still fuzzy) photo of Kerberos so far. Kerberos is not a spherically simple object, instead it is double lobed and the larger lobe is 8km wide and the smaller one is 5 km wide giving it a highly unusual look.
Yana, Year 7
We are delighted to announce the beginning of the Engineering Club as an extension of STEM society. Over the next four weeks pupils will learn about the structure and design of bridges and will work together in groups to create their own bridges! We were delighted to see everyone being so enthusiastic and cannot wait to continue next week.
A massive thank you to the fantastic year 12s: Amber J, Ava N and Anya J for organising and running the sessions!
Lucia K, Year 12
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