GRANT AWARDED - Arkholme C of E Primary School PTFA

When Wennington Hall school closed, the Arkholme CofE Primary School PTFA was lucky enough to manage to get hold of their observatory equipment during the disposals phase. The aim was to put the observatory building, which is a very large shed that has a custom sliding back roof, with the three telescopes, in the Arkholme Village Hall field and let the local Lune Valley Cluster of eleven schools, as well as other schools and groups, come to use it for dark skies science and astronomy nights and also astro photography sessions too. It was a huge STEM based opportunity that smaller schools do not get often.
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They raised the funds to put up the observatory building and had the area for it agreed with the Arkholme Village Hall trustees. However they still needed to get the remote controlled 400mm main telescope serviced and back up and running as it had not been used for 3 years, and all three telescopes needed to be professionally cleaned and calibrated. We were more than happy to help with this and the results being shown by the year 3 and 5 pupils who were the first to use them speak for themselves.