Press Releases 1998

Irish Team Wins SEA & SPACE Super Prize

A secondary school team from Ireland has won a trip to Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guyana, and to ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) at Cerro Paranal, Chile. The trip is the Super-Prize for the Sea & Space Newspaper Competition , organised within the framework of the European Week for Scientific and Technological Culture.

ESO PR Photo 33/98
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The presentation of prize certificates to the winning Irish team (right) in Lisbon, on August 31, 1998, by ESO, ESA and EAAE representatives.

Stephen Kearney, Cian Wilson (both aged 16 years), Eamonn McKeogh (aged 17 years) together with their teacher, John Daly of Blackrock College in Dublin, prepared their newspaper, Infinitus , on marine and space themes, and came first in the national round of the competition.

Together with other students from all over Europe, they were invited to present their winning newspaper to a jury consisting of representatives of the organisers, during a special programme of events at the Gulbenkian Planetarium and EXPO '98 in Lisbon, from 28-31 August, 1998.

The Irish team scored highly in all categories of the judging, which included scientific content and originality and creativity of the articles. Their look at Irish contributions to sea and space research also proved popular in a ballot by fellow student competitors. This vote was also taken into account by the judges.

The jury was very impressed by the high quality of the national entries and there were several close runners-up. The width and depth was amazing and the variety of ideas and formats presented by the sixteen teams was enormous.

A poster competition was organised for younger students, aged 10 to 13 and winning entries at national level are on display at the Oceanophilia Pavilion at EXPO '98.

The SEA & SPACE project is a joint initiative of the European Space Agency (ESA) , the European Southern Observatory (ESO) , and the European Association for Astronomy Education (EAAE) , in cooperation with the German National Research Centre for Information Technology (GMD). It builds on these organisations' several years' successful participation in the European Week for Scientific and Technological Culture organised by the European Commission .

Note:

[1] This press release is published jointly by ESA, ESO and EAAE. More information about the background of SEA & SPACE is available in ESO PR 02/98 (January 22, 1998) and ESA Press Release N 03-98 (23 January 1998).

SEA & SPACE webpages are available at these URL's:

• http://www.esrin.esa.int/seaspace
• http://www.eso.org/seaspace , and
• http://www.algonet.se/~sirius/eaae/seaspace

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