2009 will be the INTERNATIONAL YEAR of ASTRONOMY (IYA), celebrating 400 years since Galileo first turned a telescope on the sky. 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.
Science Factory & Planetarium in Eugene have been selected as one of 100 US based Science Centers for unveiling and display of two new pictures of deep space done with a NASA collaboration of the Chandra, Hubble, and Spitzer Space Telescopes. The large images will be displayed Saturday, February 14th, at 1000 AM in the Museum, and the Planetarium will show additional images at special shows on Saturday and Sunday, February 14th and 15th, at 200 PM each afternoon.
Need to figure out how to set up and use your new Telescope? Come to the Eugene Astronomical Society's TELESCOPE CLINIC: Thursday, February 26th, 7-9 PM, in Eugene, at the EWEB North Building Community Room by the river, 500 E. 4th Ave.. Free, families welcome, bring your telescope! Limited sky viewing before, during, and after, weather permitting. More info at EAS website, http://www.eugeneastro.org, contact info also there. The Boston Globe posted a series of spectacular Solar closeup images at their http://www.eugeneastro.org/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.
Space Telescope Science Institute just released info that Hubble Space Telescope had detected evidence of a large planet orbiting the star, Fomalhaut, in conjunction with the presence of a large disc of material swirling around that star. See their press release that includes an artist's sketch plus the actual discovery image.
NEW TUTORIALS ABOUT SOLAR SYSTEM and LIGHT POLLUTION plus way cool LIGHT POLLUTION SIMULATOR from International Darksky Association --------------------------------------------------------------------- WORKSHOPS - PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT for all seasons: Invitations from Gina Brissenden of CAE, AAS, ASP: Special workshop for Educators at AAS Long Beach meeting this January, and also a Reception for Educators. contact Gina at gbrissenden@as.arizona.edu or take the http://astronomy101.jpl.nasa.gov link for info and reg procedure.
In Oregon, check local sources
like ESDs for other workshops, OSTA will be in Salem in 2009.
The Armstrong/Bothun/Carr/Kang Teachers Touching the Sky workshops may resume in 2009, we're working on it! Stay tuned.
For Summer, 2009:
Professional Astrophysicist Russ Genet from Cal Poly, plans to conduct a Week
of Research for a handful of teachers at Pine Mountain Observatory. If this sounds interesting, please contact
Rick, rkang@efn.org. ------------------------------------------------------------------ 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
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.
Contact Rick, rkang@efn.org for more info about both projects.
