THE IMAGE IS A NEWSLETTER primarily for STUDENTS and TEACHERS that contains info about lessons, projects, observing, Pine Mountain, workshops, space missions, discoveries in the sky, and current sky. The IMAGE is reissued several times during the Schoolyear. Teachers can request free summary mail version from Rick, rkang@efn.org.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------- PINE MOUNTAIN IMAGE
Late Summer 2009 Edition Volume 18 No 1
written by Rick Kang
rkang@efn.org Web
Version
Welcome back! This
issue has lots of information, about 9 pages worth, so take your time reading
through.
Autumn is here. Time to schedule outreach visits (to your
class.) – See details below! (PMO is now CLOSED for visits as Winter Weather has begun!)
The mail-out version suggests that students consider
observations of the sky that would reveal what has happened to Earth over the
Summer months:
The arrival of Autumn implies that Earth has journeyed
another quarter of the way around the Sun, so that we now get to observe the
objects in a different part of the Solar System and Galaxy and Universe than we
could see on Summer nights. We have
caught up with Jupiter during the Summer, so now this huge bright ball rises
early in the evening and will be available for your viewing pleasure most of
the night. Neptune sits alongside
Jupiter (actually of course in line of sight, but about a billion miles further
from us than Jupiter, and Uranus is to the lower left of these two planets,
Uranus and Neptune require clear skies and at least binoculars to see. We have orbited away from facing the center
of the Milky Way, and now begin to view out the bottom, so we get a clearer
view of other Galaxies, including our sister great spiral, Andromeda, and the
third spiral of our Local Group, the Triangulum Galaxy. With a telescope, many other galaxies come
into view in the areas of the sky where Pegasus sits and to the southeast of
Pegasus. The bright stars in the arm of
our Galaxy just outward from us, including the famous belt of Orion, rise into
the dawn and will soon light the night sky of Winter.
KEY IDEAS:
I’ll try to start each issue this year with several items
directly useful for teachers:
1. Get the Extreme Science-From Nano to Galactic Lesson
Plan Guidebook from National Science Teachers’ Association, has wonderful
science and math lessons that address the overarching concept of scale in terms
of tackling estimation, large numbers, and then some very practical
applications of how change and limit of scale affect real life situations in
physics and biology.
2. Measure something in the sky! Make some predictions and try to synthesize
some explanations. Details listed and
explained in article toward end of this document.
3. Consider purchasing a Galileo-Scope for your
class: For $15 you receive a very well
engineered 2” refractor telescope kit, with 2-element glass primary lens, and
snap together plastic tube and eyepieces.
Gives students an idea of how Galileo made discoveries such as craters
and mountains on the Moon, changing phases of Venus, moons of Jupiter,
extension of Saturn, and nature of Milky Way.
Also can be used to teach about optics.
Works best when mounted to conventional tripod, standard camera threads
included with kit. Go to
https://www.galileoscope.org/gs/ for details and to
order.
4. Check out Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) site for
potential daily discussion topic about space:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
WORKSHOP NEWS: 1. The Student Research Workshop at Pine Mountain
Observatory during July, led by Professor Russ Genet from California along with
Richard Berry of Lyons, in July, was a great success with students attending
from South Eugene High School, St. Mary’s School (Medford), Willamette
University, and Portland Community College-Rock Creek. Data was acquired and published on several
pairs of double stars and one variable star.
Feedback was very positive, prompting Russ and the other instructors to
propose that we do a similar workshop next summer. It’s not too early to plan on attending,
contact me is you want to get on the signup list. Presentation about this event at OSTA in
October.
2. With the
funding debacle we probably won’t hold a staff development workshop at PMO this
Fall, perhaps in the Spring.
3.Astronomical Society of the Pacific holds their annual
conference at Millbrae, California, just south of San Francisco, September
12th-16th, including teacher workshops the first two days. I highly encourage you to attend if schedule
and funds allow, I’ll be there with a panel discussion group about remote
imaging data and a poster paper about Astrophysics Education and Public Outreach in Oregon. Info at http://www.astrosociety.org.
4.OSTA holds its annual conference Friday, October 9th,
in Salem, I’ll be there with a presentation about how to use Stellarium
Software to create inquiry lessons about the sky. Richard Berry will be there doing a pitch for
the Summer PMO Research Camp program.
Registration info at the OSTA website, http://www.oregonscience.org.
5. NASA usually offers several opportunities and
workshops, I’ll try to keep current info posted on the oregonsky.org website
and note events in future IMAGES as the news becomes available to me.
----------------------------------------------------------------- OUTREACH UPDATE:
I look forward to visiting your classes, noting that the
2009 revised State standards call for
elements of Astronomy at most grade levels, but concentrating on 4th and 5th
grade. The Scientific Inquiry and and
new Engineering Design items have many ready lessons in the astrophysical
context, we’ll suggest some in the IMAGE and don’t hesitate to ask me if you
need some hints.
Please try to give me several weeks lead time when you
schedule a visit.
We all know that the budgets are very slim this year, I’m
trying to locate funding to cover as much of my costs as possible, even the
standard $20 equipment use fee. My
initial idea is to contact businesses in your region and request that they
donate the fees directly to the school or school district where I’ll visit. This will incur some additional paperwork to
get the funds passed through, but hopefully will let us continue the outreach
program. If you have contacts in the
business community or know of potential private donors, please let me know, so
that I can contact these people to see if they’d be willing to help.
The financial upheaval will of course also result in
quite a few changes in where you are, I’ll try to verify everyone’s current
location ASAP, but if you can notify me ASAP of address change, that should
result in the IMAGE reaching you a lot more quickly, please email me at
rkang@efn.org.
I have some new hardware this year, including a new
portable CCD Camera and a new telescope, both of which are fairly small thus
more portable than the rigs I’ve brought to classes prior years. I have obtained a netbook
computer which vastly shrinks and lightens that element of my
hardware. Most of you now have LCD
projectors in your classrooms, if we can use them, that will eliminate one piece
of hardware to bring in and help with cost-share.
This year, I’d like to concentrate outreach sessions on
two major themes about space:
1. The search for life: searching for water in the Solar
System, and searching for exoplanets in the Milky Way. NASA and other nations’ space agencies are
beginning to dedicate a lot of resources to these two major projects.
2. The size of space: How can we get a handle on the vast
distances and what do these distances represent in terms of what we know and
can discover about our large scale environment, and what technologies can we
implement to meet this challenge?
We can still examine conventional Sun-Earth-Moon topics,
how we know what we know, and any other astrophysical topic of your choice.
There are a lot of resources posted on the new Oregon Astrophysics
Outreach website, http://oregonsky.org/.
Check the Online Resources button for a major URLs list,
I try to update all the links as often as needed. We just reached the 1000 visitors count, you
can be in the second thousand.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Observatory Manager, Mark Dunaway, noting the incoming wet and cold weather, has had to shut down the Observatory for the Winter season. The large tent has to be properly furled for safe storage. The early start of this Winter has forced us to close our doors sooner than usual. We hope that the Winter will be mild so that we can re-open in time for schools to schedule field trips to Pine Mountain in the Spring. Please stay tuned to the website for opening day information that we hope we can post after Spring Break. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Pine Mountain Revitalized:
There have been some major changes at the Observatory:
The Observatory tours are now run by a bend-based group
called Bend Astronomy Meetup. Having
people from Central Oregon be the key tourguides makes a lot more sense than
trying to rely on people from all over Oregon.
Mark Dunaway and Kent Fairfield are in charge of the operations at the
Observatory. The large new tent by the
parking lot continues to be used for the initial part of the program, the
presentation about PMO and the introduction to astrophysics. The Welcome/Info Center building across from
the Tent has souvenirs, is heated, and there is usually hot cocoa on hand. After the introductory program, visitors are
taken to the upper level where sky viewing takes place. The 24” mirror diameter telescope is the primary
instrument for visual sky viewing, plus any portable telescopes and the giant
binoculars if they are set up outside on the gravel. We’re still working on getting the new 15”
telescope with its new camera operational, we’ve run into some technical
snags. The 32” telescope is being used
for research, and is gated off so that research is not disturbed during tours,
although on weekends, often the guide may take several people over to the dome
to get a look at the telescope and camera.
All three telescopes have had their drives totally rebuilt and upgraded
by master instrument repairer Dan Gray from Portland, over the past three
years, Dan just finished fitting the 24” with computerized pointing this past
Spring.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FRIENDS OF PINE MOUNTAIN UNDERGOES REVISION:
There have also been some major changes within the
Friends of Pine Mountain organization:
Friends of Pine Mountain’s original missions supporting
the Observatory have been fulfilled, and interest in maintaining a formal group
was waning, so we’re reorganizing to recognize our two main current missions:
onsite tours, and classroom outreach, plus a new mission: facilitating
authentic research by students (see below for details). Fiscally, the UO Department of Physics now
handles all our monies rather than the UO Foundation, and there are accounts
for each of the operations but no longer for the Friends of PMO. The remaining Friends have become an informal
group of people who are interested in promoting science literacy in the context
of astrophysics, and in seeing PMO remain a viable site where the sky can be
studied, appreciated, and enjoyed.
If I need travel expenses paid by your school or
district, that check still needs to be made out to me, but the $20 equipment
use fee now goes to the Pine Mountain Observatory Fund managed by UofO Physics,
not to Friends of PMO.
One significant aspect of the change is that we’ll try to
provide research workshops where students can collect and analyze authentic
data, and then write and submit actual scientific papers. This past summer we did such a project, as
described above in the Workshops news.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------- DETAILS OF SUGGESTED MEASUREMENT PROJECTS:
Make predictions, collect data, make more predictions,
interpret data, and try to synthesize models that explain your data and your
additional predictions/results! Most of
these exercises can be readily adapted to a wide variety of grade levels. if you’d like assistance implementing a particular
activity, contact me.
a. Track the Sun (carefully, without looking directly at
it, perhaps by using shadows cast by a pole), hour to hour, day to day at a
specific hour. What changes do you
notice?
Can you use your data to notice any change in length of
daylight and why this might be happening?
b. Track, sketch, and measure the Moon from night to
night. Can you discover a cycle, and
create a model to explain what you observe?
(Professor Bothun likes to suggest a Moon project that involves measuring width of impact craters using a digital image of the Moon, and a web based imaging tool that he can provide, then do some statistics with your data that might give you clues about how the craters came about and some history and current information about our Solar System.) c. Keep an eye on Jupiter, perhaps sketching details you
observe through a telescope or even through binoculars (steadily braced), or
predict and measure how far Jupiter appears to travel relative to other sky
objects over a month or two.
d. Estimate the number of stars visible in the sky, and
then how many stars might be in our Galaxy, and perhaps even how many other
Galaxies there might be. Then look at
some image data from Hubble Space Telescope or Sloan Digital Sky Survey. You could order your own data from a number
of observatories we’ll shortly have listed, or contact me for more info. What might prevent your estimate from being
anywhere near correct, what factors limit what you might be able to see?
e. Consider some of the visual measurements of objects
you could make, such as their observed angular size (width) as we view them
from Earth. Compare your observed
measurements with some astrophysical data from a NASA or other professional
source (keeping in mind that they have special instruments to do this but are
not necessarily correct!) What do you
find about how your observations correlate to some of the professional
measurements? What does the OBSERVED
diameter of an object tell us, and what DOESN’T it tell us? (Can you make similar comparisons with how
bright an object appears?)
f. Try to determine how you might go about estimating or
actually measuring the distance to a variety of objects in the sky.
g. Try to figure out how timekeeping was done before the
invention of watches and clocks and way before the modern systems of measuring
atomic vibrations. Make some
observations that show you Nature’s variety of available “clocks”.
------------------------------------------------------------------------ TWO AUTHENTIC RESEARCH PROJECTS:
2. On October 9th at 430 AM PDT, the NASA LCROSS impactor
is scheduled to hit the Moon, in an attempt to dislodge water molecules for
detection by the LCROSS instrument craft and by earth-based instruments. Impact will be into a crater near the Moon’s
south pole, the exact crater is yet to be selected (after data from the
associated Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter
is analyzed.) The selection will be
posted along with a map at the LCROSS website.
Amateur observers are needed to also collect visual observations, see
details at
http://lcross.arc.nasa.gov/observation.htm .
Suggestions are to use between a 10 to 12 inch aperture
telescope to look for the plumes that will last for a few minutes after impact,
and to take digital images if you can.
The Moon will be in waning Gibbous phase. The crash time was optimized for observations
during darkness from Mauna Kea Observatory in Hawaii, but we on the West Coast
get a pretty good observing window, also.
---------------------------------------------------------------------- INTERNATIONAL SOLAR POSITION OBSERVATION PROJECT:
Last year we attempted to launch a project in conjunction
with teachers Reiko Aya and Graeme Bond who teach at a private school in Tokyo,
Japan, where students there and over here measure azimuth and altitude of Sun
at simultaneous times (800 AM in Japan is 3 or 4 PM the prior day over here in
Oregon (PST or PDT). The goal of the
project is to have the students use their observations (communicated to one
another via email) to create a model of the orientation of Earth to the Sun, to
promote understanding of the students’ relative locations and separation on
Earth, Earth’s orientation to the Sun, Earth’s rotation, reasons for night and
day, how we tell time, how and why time differs from place to place of changing
longitude on Earth, and why and how we use the International Date Line. Reiko, who taught Elementary school in
Portland several years ago (and participated in one of our first staff
development summer sessions at Pine Mountain), obtained a clear plastic
hemisphere that her current middle school students are using to plot Solar
position by marking position on hemisphere that connects from tip of small
vertical pole within hemisphere to shadow point cast on flat baseboard
underneath hemisphere. Mr. Bond was the
actual Science teacher over there, Reiko now actually teaches Japanese, like an
English teacher in our schools. There will be a different Science teacher this year, don't know who yet. We’re
looking for schools in Oregon to participate, please contact me if you’re
interested.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
EYE on the SKY
September and October, 2009: Evening sky:Jupiter looms in the SE just after sunset, a
very bright whitish dot. even in a small
telescope or braced binoculars, you should be able to see the four Galilean
moons. The impact smear in Jupiter’s
atmosphere from July has pretty much dissipated (Jupiter was hit two months ago
by a formidable asteroid or comet or piece thereof, causing a bigger-than-Earth
sized blemish to Jupiter’s atmosphere, similar to what happened in 1994 when Comet Shoemaker-Levy’s pieces slammed into the Jovian atmosphere. The current impact was discovered by an
amateur astronomer imaging from Australia.
With sky charts and binoculars, you should be able to
locate Neptune and Uranus not far from where Jupiter is in the sky. bluish and
greenish dots respectively.
Morning sky: Predawn, brilliant Venus dominates the
eastern sky, with reddish Mars now quite a ways above. When you observe the waning crescent Moon along
with these two planets around mid-month, you can say you’ve seen the three
closest natural major objects to Earth simultaneously, Moon, Venus, and Mars.
Don’t fall for the Hoax on the internet about Mars
getting as big and bright as the full moon, this hoax began several years ago
when indeed Mars made the closest approach to Earth in many years, but even
then, at many thousand times the distance of the Moon, Mars was only a bright
orange dot.
The night of September 2nd, the four big moons of Jupiter
are all out of view for two hours during late evening, a very rare occurance.
The morning of September 22nd, Mercury and Saturn will
appear very close together in the predawn morning sky, and Saturn noses up to
Venus predawn October 13th.
The
September event is pretty well hidden by the glare of the rising Sun, be VERY
careful if you try to scan for these objects with any optical aid that you
DON’T accidentally get the Sun in view, instant permanent blindness could
readily occur!
In November, the Leonid meteor shower may have an intense
display.
Stay tuned to the oregonsky.org website for updates and
more complete information on these events.
Contact local Astronomical Societies (listed under
Educational Collaborators at the oregonsky.org website) to schedule “star
parties” at your school where local amateurs bring out fairly large telescopes
for students, parents, and faculty to look at a variety of objects in the
evening sky. Avoid Full Moon nights, and
check for locations where there’s minimum light pollution (and no
sprinklers!).
To return to the original topic at start of IMAGE about
autumn sky, we now view out through a thinner portion of the Milky Way, through
top or bottom, so we avoid a lot of the interstellar dust, and thus can get
views of distant galaxies across great gulfs of space. Andromeda is certainly the most spectacular,
it would actually cover many moon-widths of sky if we could see all the faint
extended stars of that “island universe”.
