An astronomy team composed of students and teachers from Pui Tou Secondary School has been honoured at an award ceremony, public broadcaster TDM reports.
On 19 April last year, the team sighted an asteroid while at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Purple Mountain Observatory in Nanjing. After its presence was confirmed by the International Astronomical Union in November, the celestial body was given the name 2023HZ9.
TDM says an award ceremony was held last month to celebrate the team’s discovery – the first of its kind to be made by a local school.
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A representative of the team who was interviewed by the broadcaster said that the asteroid’s discovery was “happenstance,” noting that the team felt lucky and happy, as the knowledge and experience that they had obtained from this event would be “very useful” to their future development.
According to one of the teachers in charge, Jin Xin, the astronomy team was established over a decade ago and has been persisting with asteroid research ever since.
Students in Macao recently ranked very highly in science, coming third place in the subject in the OECD’s Programme of International Student Assessment (PISA) results.
