On December 10, 2025, an experiment took place at the Cluj Astronomical Observatory (Romania), in which students from Babeș-Bolyai University, Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science, guided 7th grade pupils from a school in Sălaj County through an experimental learning method. Astronomy education, focused on exoplanets, was supported by the research opportunities offered by the Erasmus+ Exo4EDU project.
In the first part of the meeting, each student interactively presented a captivating topic from the universe of exoplanets, elucidating concepts unknown to the pupils.
In the second part, the students introduced an application related to the problem of interstellar travel, which aroused great interest among the children, and formed 12 mixed groups of students and pupils. Each child chose an exoplanet from the database (exoplanet.eu) and calculated, with the help of the students, how many years it would take to reach it, given the speeds of the fastest spacecraft.
The experience was extremely successful, with excellent collaboration between students and pupils. The children had the opportunity to observe the planet Saturn, the star Vega and the open cluster Pleiades through a telescope, which broadened their horizons in the in-depth study of the mysteries of astronomy.