Great job, teachers from Woodburn School District who attended the Workshop at Pine Mountain week of July 18th-22nd! Professor Carr posted the Sun-Earth-Moon summary document on the Woodburn workshop site at the Pacific U website. And, great job PMO Research Crew first week of August, we'll be emailing you the Exit Survey shortly.
Welcome, Central Oregon teachers, visiting us Thursday, Aug. 19th. We'll meet at PMO at 700 PM. Links to FITSVIEW and to scale model Solar System activity are posted at Online Resources area.
---------------------------------------------------------------------- Original info posted at this sublink: 2009 was the INTERNATIONAL YEAR of ASTRONOMY (IYA), celebrated 400 years since Galileo first turned a telescope on the sky. There will be some residual activities going on in 2010. The star, Epsilon Aurigae is under close observation by many amateur and professional astrophysicists. This star is predicted to change brightness as the disk of dust and gas that we think surrounds this star interacts with the star. One event has already been observed. See the Campaign 2009 site for details.
You can order a GalileoScope, a slightly improved version of the refractor Galileo used, this device has been designed by educators for students and public to introduce as many people as possible to actual telescopic views of Moon and Planets (DON'T EVER VIEW THE SUN !!!) See http://www.galileoscope.org/ for details. Very reasonably priced, easy to assemble, can be dis-assembled for classroom instruction in optics.
See more info, featured topics and objects to study and observe each month, and projects and resources for students at: NASA IYA Website, and at the Astronomical Society of Pacific IYA website, contacts
listed there. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The Boston Globe posted a series of spectacular Solar closeup images at their http://bigpicture website. FYI, the site does include quite a few comments by readers, including a debate about religion, you may want to preview this if your group is sensitive about the topic.
Current astrophysical discoveries of note include: 1. Discovery of a huge but diffuse ring of dust encircling Saturn and its already known rings (see Spitzer Infra Red Telescope website for details). 2. An asteroid that apparently had a high speed collision recently with another asteroid, the one seen is sprouting a huge dust tail now. (See Hubblesite for more info and the image). TUTORIALS ABOUT SOLAR SYSTEM and LIGHT POLLUTION plus way cool LIGHT POLLUTION SIMULATOR from International Darksky Association --------------------------------------------------------------------- WORKSHOPS - PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT for all seasons:
In Oregon, check local sources
like ESDs for other workshops, OSTA Annual Conference will be at Colton in the Valley in October, 2010.
We are trying to develop demand info for a Professional Development workshop along the lines of our prior Summer events, if you're interested in any type of workshop about aspects of astronomy and astrophysics, please contact Rick (rkang@efn.org) so we can get a tally by later this year so that Professor Bothun can get some leverage for funding. Thanks!
------------------------------------------------------------------ TWO INTERNATIONAL PROJECTS GOING ON:
1. Have your students work with students at school in Tokyo to exchange information about local time and local Solar position, to gain conceptual understanding of Earth's rotation, orientation of Earth and Sun, and how time zones and dateline work. Students would exchange data taken at simultaneous time (800 AM in Japan next day corresponds to 400 PM Oregon PDT, 300 PM Oregon PST), noting altitude and azimuth position of Sun, then construct model of Earth and their locations on Earth relative to Sun at that instant. Students can then examine properties of time zones and international dateline, as well as Earth's motion relative to Sun.
NEW 10/21/08: We'll post reports from classes: You need to estimate/measure solar position in degrees. Azimuth is clockwise from true north, so due west = 270 deg. DON'T LOOK DIRECTLY AT SUN!!! BLINDNESS WILL OCCUR!!! Invent a device that uses shadow to make measurement, that would be most accurate and safest. We want to post:
School Location Time/Date Altitude of Sun Azimuth of Sun
Update April 24th, 2009: Two students from the school in Japan submitted data tables showing change in Solar position over two months. They've been encouraged to continue their data collection and to consider a hypothesis for the trend they're seeing so far.
Update May 12th, 2009: Three students in Tokyo have compiled some data on a spreadsheet. We're still looking for participation from this side of the Pacific!
Status Feb. 5th, 2010: We haven't put this project together for this school year, but if you're interested, please contact Rick and we can try again.
2. Have your students work with students at school in Southern Hemisphere (New Zealand) to exchange Solar position and local temperature/weather data to explore hemispheric differences and to synthesize concept of how seasons are related to sunshine amount variations due to tilt of Earth's axis. Students at both schools would construct "Sun Stake" sundial-like device that allows measurement of Solar angle from horizon at local Noon (when Sun appears highest in sky), then would exchange this data (solar max height, cardinal direction of Sun, and changes noted over several weeks/months) and account for differences and changes in values. One suggestion for collecting the daily Solar data to preclude disruption of observing site might be to fasten a small pole, say a foot high, to a piece of plywood. Place plywood in sunny area outdoors, where you can clearly mark where the four corners contact the ground, so that you can reset the board down each subsequent day in EXACTLY the same location/orientation. At precisely the same hour (12 noon), mark the shadow tip of the pole on the plywood (you may have to do some initial experiments to determine height, orientation on plywood, and location on ground so that shadow indeed falls onto open area of plywood. Keep track of this shadow, precisely marking its location on the plywood. Make predictions of potential changes and try to explain any observed changes, as well as explaining why observations from the school in the opposite hemisphere may differ from yours.
Update March 5th, 2009: We've had no takers so far for this program, but I'd still like to see it occur, so if you're interested, please let me know.
Contact Rick, rkang@efn.org for more info about both projects.
