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Langton Star Centre

Welcome to the webpage for the Langton Star Centre, the home of science based research projects at the Langton.  In this section you will be able to find out background information about the student led research projects we currently have running at the school.  If you are interested in our research, look out for our annual symposium held in late June every year, where our students present their research as talks and posters.

Radiation Camera

We carry out research projects using a radiation camera developed by the MediPix Collaboration. In the past we have used this chip in several ways including the monitoring of Muons (tiny subatomic particles that form when cosmic rays strike the upper atmosphere) and the monitoring of ambient radiation as we travel across France and Switzerland on our way to CERN.

Our most recent project with the chip (2022-2023) was an investigation into the absorption coefficient of lead for gamma rays. In this investigation we measured the energy deposited on the chip by gamma rays with absorbers in front of the chip and without absorbers in front of the chip, some of the results can be seen below:

Our current project for 2023-2024 is based on the hypothesis that bones can take up strontium-90 in the place of calcium and that, as strontium-90 is a beta emitter, old bones may produce radiation levels that are slightly above background levels. We will be using our radiation camera to see if we can detect any small increase in radiation levels when it placed in close proximity to bones used by the biology department.

Astronomy

We have a large astronomy group here at The Langton who are based at The Langton Observatory.  We have a variety of optical telescopes that the group use.  The astronomy group are able to access the observatory during observing sessions and run our Stargazing Live events, where the public can visit the observatory. The picture below show’s Dr Gaby Roch presenting at our Autumn 2023 Moon festival, an event that was run in conjunction with the Mandarin department. 

As well as using our own optical telescopes, students in our astronomy group have access to a global network of professional telescopes through the Faulkes Telescope Project. Using this network of telescopes our students are able to take images of objects in deep space and experiment with different colour filters. The different coloured images are then stacked to produce full colour images, such as this image below of the Orion Nebula, which was produced by one of our students and won an award: