I’ve just come back in from looking for shooting stars. My 10 year old daughter was with me, and together we saw 6 in half an hour. We also saw at least as many satellites. All on polar orbits. I’ve been stargazing on and off all my life. I remember noticing a drop in the number of observed satellites after the end of the Cold War. Now there are more than before, it seems to me. While we were outside, my daughter mentioned that her (state) primary school teacher (who trained as a secondary school maths teacher) had told her class that our sun is the largest star. My daughter had raised her hand and said that’s not right, there are loads of stars that are much much bigger (she’s seen comparisons on YouTube). The teacher replied, apparently: Not in our galaxy. Oh dear. I pointed vertically upwards to Vega and told her that star is one of our next door neighbours, you can see the Milky Way behind it. It’s about twice the size of our sun. Just saying.
I suppose it’s alright to mention that her teacher is female. She was, after all, challenged by another female.
