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This page will contain the latest issue of the Pine Mountain IMAGE,
a flyer that tells you about current sky events, workshops for teachers, and gives you projects for your students and interesting website resources to explore.

PINE MOUNTAIN IMAGE  Jan-Feb 2009  Volume 17  No 3          
By Rick Kang     rkang@efn.org  541-683-1381  
HAPPY NEW YEAR!     
We bring this issue to you to:
1. To let you know about activities planned for International Year of Astronomy (IYA), this year, 2009!
2. Let you know about upcoming events in sky to Observe.
3. To encourage you to invite us to visit your classroom this Winter/Spring.
4. To encourage you to make reservations now to bring your class to Pine Mountain Observatory later this Spring.
5. To provide some inquiry projects about the sky for your students.  

(Please let me know if you’d like a hard-copy snail mailed)

INTERNATIONAL YEAR OF ASTRONOMY IYA: Celebrating Galileo’s first look at heavens through a telescope 400 years ago! Look through a modern telescope at a local “star party” hosted by your astronomical society, bring your students to a Planetarium or to an Observatory, look at the IYA websites for highlight topics each month to observe and study. January’s hot topic is Telescopes & Space Probes, and the featured sky object to observe is Venus.  February’s hot topic is Our Solar System, and featured object is our Moon.  See all the rest of the list and much more at link from News & Projects area at http://oregonsky.org/.  We’ll bring a telescope to your classroom and conduct projects about Moon and Solar System.

VIEWING THE SKY (Download Stellarium for your own view of the sky on your computer, this is an excellent FREE program!)
1. Brilliant Venus, now high in western post sunset sky, slides by Uranus January 22nd, you’ll need binocs or telescope to see Uranus which should appear as a greenish dot.
2. Saturn rises by late evening, displays ring-plane crossing:  The famous ringed planet is a bright golden dot below Leo, rising in east in late evening.  If you observe Saturn through telescope, rings not currently visible as nearly edge-on to us (the rings, primarily chunks of ice, are only about a mile thick)! The rings will appear to open a bit as the year progresses (and Saturn continues to rise earlier).  They will look thinner toward Fall, they go totally edge on in September, but Saturn is then in conjunction with the Sun, thus invisible.  The next “ring plane crossing” is in 2038!
3. Planets will group in pre-dawn Spring sky: By February, Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto appear low in eastern predawn sky.  By March, Uranus and Venus join them.
Why does this transition take place, from western evening sky this past Fall, to eastern morning sky?  Mercury and Venus outrun Earth, swinging to opposite side of Sun from our viewpoint.  What about the “superior” planets (those orbiting the Sun outside of Earth’s orbit)?  What does Earth do?  As we orbit the Sun, we appear to cross to the other side of the Sun relative to those planets, hence they switch from following the Sun to preceding the Sun (sunrise) from our point of view! Check the applet suggested by Professor Larson on the first page of Online Resources link area of the oregonsky website to see the mechanics of how planets orbit a sun.    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SCHEDULE CLASSROOM OUTREACH If we haven’t already visited your classroom, we’d be glad to schedule a visit, many program options, contact Rick, rkang@efn.org, ASAP as schedule can fill quickly. I’m usually booked solid by March through June!
Several of the new programs I’m offering include:
1. Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence: based on recent information from Professor Seth Shostak of SETI, we look at conditions for life, potential locations in Solar System, how we find extra-solar planets, how common they are, how we define and search for intelligent life, and conclude with two interesting predictions from Dr. Shostak that he made in a September lecture in Portland.
2. Stellar Populations and Characteristics:  Using a series of 42 Star Cards, each color coded and with data about a specific star in the Milky Way, assembled by Professor Julie Lutz of UW, students explore the statistics of characteristics of stars in our galaxy, and the evolutionary relationships.  We of course cover the popular topic of Black Holes.
3. Build an Analog Moon Computer:  Out of a few pieces of cardboard plus a brass brad, construct an analog device that illustrates the relationships among Moon phase, location in sky (east, high, west), and time of observation, facilitating understanding of reasons why we view phase changes and cycle.  This device was designed by Nancy Whitman last Spring, Nancy teaches Middle School at Creswell.  Descriptive link online at oregonsky website ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  FIELD TRIP TO PINE MOUNTAIN OBS. If you’re contemplating bringing your class to Pine Mountain, Tour Scheduler Mark Dunaway advises to plan a date in May or later, and contact Mark ASAP, markpmo@oregon.uoregon.edu, to get on the calendar, as dates, particularly dark Moon, fill fast!  Mark advises that due to the wet and snowy winter so far, the road will probably not be passable until May.  Mark will furnish a quote on the cost of the tour when you contact him, he recommends selecting an alternative date before you contact him in case your first date has already been booked or weather is bad on that date.  email is best to reach him, but you can also try phoning the Observatory at 541-382-8331.  Please don’t phone Rick about scheduling PMO tours, as Rick is in Eugene, not Bend.  The campground should be useable by May, if you want to contact a Bend school instead (to camp in their Gym), several classes have been successful with Cascade Middle School and Pilot Butte Middle School, Pilot Butte or High Desert Middle Schools are closest to the road leaving Bend toward PMO. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PROJECTS FOR STUDENTS:  These are all inquiry style projects:
1. Elementary: Solar motion: Build a Sundial, correlate to time. The goal of this project is to investigate the apparent motion of the Sun, what the apparent position tells us, and can be extended to exchanging solar position data with schools overseas to develop a perspective of the Earth’s orientation to the Sun.  Technically this is a relatively simple project, just establishing a Gnomon (Sun Stake or pole or triangle) that casts a shadow that can be marked on the ground or on a base plate. Data (shadow location) can be recorded hourly, and daily/weekly.  Why are there changes?  How do we tell time? What time is it somewhere else on the globe?  
2. Middle School: Solar altitude at Noon, correlate to Seasons. This is an extension of the above project:  Again using a Gnomon, and carefully tracking maximum Solar angle over weeks and months (how high is Sun at High Noon local solar time?).  Why might this change?  What effect might this have?  In addition, Sunrise and Sunset times and angles (azimuth) on horizon might be tabulated and correlated. We’re also trying to involve schools at other locations on Earth in the is project, particularly a school in the Southern Hemisphere.  
3. High School: Track Planets against Stars, correlate distances. Plot locations of some of the planets against the background stars, keep track of the planets over several months (Venus and Saturn would be good starters presently).  What do you notice?  How can you explain this effect?  Why did ancient astronomers attribute something special to these “wanderers”?  How did these observations lead to the idea of the Solar System?  
4. All Grades: How can you create Light?  What is Light? One of my favorite sayings is “The Photons Are the Data!”. (“Photon” is the ancient Greek word for Light.) No light, no data, whether on Earth or from Deep Space. How is light created?  Flip a switch you say, or get a battery? OK, but what does the switch actually do, or what does a battery do?  What else do you need with them to actually make light happen, how do these SYSTEMS work? What if you’re out in the middle of nowhere, no switch, no battery, but you need light?  What is required to be done, or to happen, or what conditions enable creation/emission of photons?  Consider sources of light in your home or neighborhood or school, and how that light is created.  Is there anything these sources have in common?  How about in Deep Space:  What types of objects give off light?  (While you’re considering this, consider what bright objects actually manufacture light, versus perhaps “borrowing” light from somewhere else (reflecting the light)!)  What’s the brightest natural object?  Why is it so bright? (again, try to relate to household, particularly kitchen objects) I’ve added this project since light and the physics of light is so critical to so many ideas in science and engineering, and of course the key to almost all astrophysical discoveries! The second question is trickier:  We really don’t KNOW what light is!  We have some pretty good models for photons, one is that they behave like ping-pong balls, the other is that they behave like ocean waves, depends on the experiment you try! Characterize light, what does it do, what can it cause to happen, what are its features, what can you measure about it?  That’s about the best we can do for now!   The first section of this item is the inquiry lesson.  Here is some scaffolding:  We are talking about ENERGY.  Light is associated with heat, another form of energy.  Light can transform into heat as our Sunlight so often does, and vice versa in your projector lamp.  Heat or other energy can raise the energy levels of electrons in atoms.  When these energized electrons "fall" to lower energy levels, the lost energy is emitted as a photon.  Photons have a FLUX RATE; amount of photons hitting or passing through a unit area per unit of time. This is the intensity or luminosity (for astrophysicists translates to magnitude), and is typically proportional to distance of light source from measurement location, temperature of source, and diameter or area of source.  Electromagnetic energy - photons propagate (move) at the speed of light via both an electric and a magnetic "field" (hence can move through a vacuum, not needing a medium like water or air).  These fields can be modeled in a sense as waves, and in the sense of wavelength and frequency, exist over a large spectrum of dimensions from many meters to microns and angstrom sized wavelengths: The electro-magnetic (E/M) spectrum including such waves as radio, microwave, infra red, visible light, ultra violet, gamma, and X-rays, has specific frequencies/wavelengths and associated energies (shorter wavelength = higher energy), in a sense translating as “color”.  A wave may have a high "amplitude", the vertical stretching distance of the wave, but don't confuse this with the flux rate, the number of waves or photons.  Other than the specific location of the emission source, the only other measurable characteristics of E/M radiation are its flux rate and its energy (color).  (OK, we could measure polarization, too.) While you’re exploring energy, you might want to explore heat, electromagnetism, and gravity, along with waves. Photons can behave as quantized packets of energy, preferring specific energy levels to form and to dissipate.  showing up visually as absorption (dark) or emission (bright) spectral bands.  We can use such patterns of bands to fingerprint specific atomic structure, hence determine composition of material interacting with the light (spectroscopy).  Photons can also behave like waves in the sense of creating “interference” patterns where multiple wave fronts overlapping can either cancel each other or reinforce each other, we can use this property to highlight information we want like the diameter of a distant star, or to cancel information we don’t want, like the bright starlight hiding the faint light of an orbiting planet.    

TELESCOPE CLINIC
For those of you in or near the Eugene-Springfield metro area: I’ve Never Used My New Telescope! Help is here if you received a Telescope for the Holidays or own a Telescope but never used it because you don’t know how to set it up nor what to view in the night sky: Come to the Eugene Astronomical Society’s Scope Clinic: Thursday, February 26th, 7-9 PM, Eugene, EWEB North Bldg. Community Room, 500 E. 4th Ave., by river, Free.  Families welcome, bring your telescope!  Limited sky viewing outside, weather permitting.  More info at EAS website, http://www.eugeneastro.org/, contacts listed there.  ---------------------------------------------------------------------     and, SPECIAL UNVEILING 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------  

PLACES FOR STUDENTS TO VISIT for everyone around Oregon:
Visit Planetariums, Observatories, Clubs:
(web sites linked at http://oregonsky.org/ see the Educational Collaborators links area, and also the list of URLs in Online Resources links area) Many of these organizations have IYA activities planned!  
Portland
:  Kendall Planetarium at OMSI, Rose City Astronomers, Haggart Observatory at Clackamas, Mt. Hood Community College Planetarium and Observatory
The Dalles: Goldendale Observatory & Planetarium
McMinnville: Oregon Air & Space Museum
Salem: Night Sky 45 Club, Planetarium at Chemeketa CC
Corvallis: Heart of the Valley Astronomers
Eugene: Science Factory/Planetarium, Eugene Astronomical Society
Roseburg: Umpqua Amateur Astronomers
Medford: Science Works Museum at Ashland, Southern Oregon Sky Watchers Club, Planetarium at North Medford High School
Bend: Sunriver Nature Center, Central Oregon Astronomical Society,
and of course, Pine Mountain Observatory

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NEW URLS:
CHECK the Listing of URLs under the ONLINE RESOURCES link
at the oregonsky homepage for latest and most commonly used links.

We've added two URLs for pictures of Solar System objects from
NASA and JPL sources.
  

 
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