Download AAS/AAPT meeting consolidated synopses by Richard Berry PDF

April 19, 2001
Resources for Teaching
Astronomy
Rick Kang, Susanne Moe, and Richard Berry
Report to the Board of the Friends of Pine
Mountain Observatory on resources for
teaching hands-on courses in astronomy,
based on the AAS/AAPT meeting held in
San Diego, CA, in January 2001.
The AAS/AAPT was a favorable environment for learning about astronomical resources
for the classroom and laboratory. Our report begins with an alphabetical list of resources
and includes brief descriptions of key papers presented at the AAS/AAPT meeting.
ADC: the Astronomical Data Center
ASTRONOMCAL
CATALOGS
The ADC is a repository of astronomical data maintained at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD. Via web acess, anyone can gain access to 3,000 data catalogues,
including tables published in astronomical journals, images, spectra, and maps.
Although clearly a tool intended for professional astronomers, with care students and
teachers can use it to identify interesting target for imaging or research. The web
address for the ADC is http://adc.gsfc.nasa.gov/.
In addition to the on-line resource, many large catalogs have been transferred to
CDROMs. These are available at a nominal charge via http://adc.gsfc.nasa.gov/
adc_other_media.html.
ADS: the NASA Astrophysics Data System
ACCESS TO THE
LITERATURE
This NASA-funded web site provides access to abstracts and scientific papers in astronomy, and it is open and free to all users. Four databases containing two million items
anyone to run queries for abstracts that in astronomy and astrophysics, space instrumen-
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Astronomy Village
tation, physics and geophysics, and astronomy preprints. The databases draw from hundreds of journals, publications, colloquia, symposia, procedings, dissertations, and
NASA reports by author name, title, abstract keywords, or object name. In many cases,
the full text of the article has been scanned and can be downloaded and printed. According to the ADS documentation, over 1,300,000 text pages are available on-line.
The web address is http://adswww.harvard.edu.
The value of this system cannot be underestimated. The ADS makes it possible for a
teacher or student located far from a university library to scan the astronomical literature and come up with hundreds of papers on a topic. At first glance, professional papers
may appear be over the heads of most students and teachers, but the thoughtful
researcher can also find summaries and non-technical papers on the ADS. Following the
references in these often leads to the best and most valuable papers, and finally into a
full exploration of the literature.
Astronomy Village
AIMED AT MIDDLE-SCHOOL
STUDENTS
The search for life is the object of Stephen Pompia’s Astronomical Village. This learning environment is delivered on a CDROM, and it resembles a computer gaming environment in which the student explores a small mountaintop observatory “village” with a
library containing data, etc. Clicking on objects in the library, for example, opens
“books” containing data.
According to Pompia, the premise of Astronomy Village is that science is a contact
sport and social activity. In simulation, students explore the world the same way scientists do. Astronomy Village is immersive, and stimulates high-order thinking and creativity. We tried the demonstration CDROM, but found it frustratingly limited. In
fairness, the full working version may be much better.
CONCAM, the All-Sky Camera Network
ALL-SKY IMAGES
“How bright was Betelgeuse last night?” asked Robert Nemiroff. Unless someone measured it, no one knows. Said Nemiroff, “The past sky is gone forever.” With CONCAM,
however, there is a continuous record of last night’s sky imaged with a fish-eye lens and
recorded with a CCD camera. Each CONCAM unit operates continuously and automatically making an image of the entire night sky every 120 seconds. The CONCAM costs
about $10,000, and consists of a waterproof suitcase housing the camera and its electronics; the uncapped lens sticks out the side. Stars down to sixth magnitude are visible
in the images. And all past images are available via the Internet.
In the image archive lies a teaching opportunity. How bright was Betelgeuse last night?
How rich was the Leonid meteor shower? What is the period of delta Cephei? The
CONCAM team’s web site is http://concam.net.
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Resources for Teaching Astronomy
CLEA
CLEA
LABORATORY
EXPERIENCES IN
ASTRONOMY
CLEA consists of software simulations of observing and reducing astronomical data. At
the AAS, Larry Marschall demonstrated the beta version of CLEA’s newest laboratory
exercise, “The Search for Object X.” In this exercise, the student is given the coordinates of Object X and asked to find out as much as possible about it. The CLEA software includes simulated optical and radio telescopes, a CCD camera, a photoelectric
photometer, and a spectrograph. Depending on the type of object, the student can determine the object’s spectral type, redshift, and distance.
The student manual describes how the student can classify Object X, and suggests strategies for making observations. Funded by the National Science Foundation and Gettysburg College, CLEA activities are available as free downloads from the CLEA web site.
Hands-On Universe
STUDENT ANALYSIS OF
REAL CCD DATA
Hands-On Universe describes itself as a “federally funded program that uses technology
to empower education.” Aimed at grades 9 through 12, the curriculum appears to be
based on the analysis of CCD images from an on-line image archive and a network of
HOU telescopes from which teachers and students can request observations. Using
images taken at CTIO for other purposes, student participants in the asteroid search program discovered a trans-Neptunian Kuiper-belt asteroid 1998 FS144. Another student
serendipitously discovered supernova 1994-l in NGC5194 using the HOU telescope
network.
The curriculum is built around access to real CCD images and an image analysis and
processing program licensed from HOU, coupled with an on-line curriculum and student and teacher workbooks developed at the Lawrence Hall of Science at UC Berkeley
and the Third International Math and Science Study team. In addition, HOU summer
workshops are held for teachers at locations around the United States.
The Hands-On Universe web site is http://hou.lbl.gov.
JAVA Labs
UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL
APPLETS
These are exercises in dynamical astrophysiocs. applets include a galactic rotation curve
fitter and the collision of two galaxies.
The web site is http://burro.astr.cdru.edu.
Resources for Teaching Astronomy
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Just-In-Time Teaching (JiTT) and Physlets
Just-In-Time Teaching (JiTT) and Physlets
PEDAGOGY
This unique blend of a teaching method (JiTT) with web technology( Physlets) struck
me as highly effective. In a 3-hour workshop/class session on JITT presented by Gregor
Novak and Evelyn Patterson, we saw both the method and technology in action. I only
wish that I could have taken classes with such stimulating and intense intellectual interactions with my teachers.
As implemented, the day before class, the JiTT student logs onto the class web site and
takes the warmup exercise (or “preflight”) and does the exercises. These are designed to
introduce the topic, stimulate questions in the student’s mind, and encourage the student
to engage in formulating an understanding of the topic. Student answers are sent electronically to the instructor. Reading the student responses gives the instructor a clear
idea of the students’ degree of understanding and target instruction to areas that cause
difficulty for the students, improving classroom interaction because the students know
that the instructor has examined the warmups carefully.
Physlets are “interactive curricular materials,” or physics-related JAVA aplets, often
simulations of physical systems. In the JiTT context, they may be part of the warm-up
exercise, as enrichment, or as stand-alone instructional materials. They can be anything
that can be modelled–from a swinging pendulum, a bouncing ball, a relativistic particle,
an expanding fluid, an orbiting planet. The student can interact with the system, by setting conditions, measuring locations, velocities, or voltages.
Two books set out the principles of JiTT and Physlets: Just-in-Time Teaching: Blending
Active Learning with Web Technology by Novak, Pastterson, Gavrin, and Christian
(Prentice-Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 1999) and Physlets: Teaching Physics with
Interactive Curricular Material by Christian and Belloni (Prentice-Hall, Upper Saddle
River, NJ, 2001). Clearly JiTT and Physlets both depend on more than a method; energetic and inspired teaching is also required. The JiTT website is http://webphysics.iupui.edu.
MicroObservatory
CCD ASTRONOMY
This project seems to be ramping up. The principals (Roy Gould and Marry Dussault)
are inviting schools to “join our team” and “field-test our curriculum modules in your
own classroom.” The MicroObservatory itself consists of a portable, weatherproof 4inch computer-controlled on-line telescope on the roof of your school. Each is one element in a world-wide network of similar telescopes. The individual telescope is apparently capable of making CCD images of deep-sky objects through red, green, and blue
filters, and downloading the images to a computer, and it appears to be possible to make
images with telescopes at remote schools (Massachusetts, Hawaii, and Mt Stromlo Australia). The web sites are http://mo-www.harvard.edu/MicroObservatory and http://cfawww.harvard.edu/webscope.
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Resources for Teaching Astronomy
National Schools Observatory (UK)
National Schools Observatory (UK)
THE UK’S NATIONAL
TELESCOPE FOR SCHOOL
Sponsored by the Astrophysics Research Institute of John Moores University in Liverpool, England, the National Schools Observatory is a web-based educational resource
for teachers in the UK. The principal telescope is a 2-meter instrument located in the
Canary Islands, and other telescopes will be located in Australia, Hawaii, and Japan.
Observing requests are accepted each day, and data is returned the next day. The educational focus is on teaching A-level physics.
The web site is http://www.schoolsobservatory.org.uk.
NED: the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database
DATABASE FACILITY
NED contains positions and basic data for several million extragalactic objects, and well
as bibliographic references to 46,000 published papers. NED can also retrieve images in
the FITS file format from the Aladin database.
Access via the WWW is http://nedwww.ipac.caltech.edu.
Project LITE: Light Inquiry through Experiments
SIMPLE EXPERIMENTS
WITH LIGHT
This is the brainchild of Kenneth Brecher (Boston University). The concept is to provide a low-cost (~$12) package of filters, polarizers, gratings, and other optical components in a compact-disk jewel-box, for sale to students through college bookstore. By
taking optical experiments out of the lab and into the student’s dorm room or home, the
science of light is made “real” in ways that formal lab sessions are not. Web-based software provides instruction (see http://www.bu.edu/smec/LITE).
Brecher describes Project LITE as a “hands-on, inquiry-based, constructivist learning”
experience. I feel that the strength of this concept is its great simplicity. The student can
“play” with the assortment of optical materials in a constructive and creative way. The
project is supported by the NSF, but the kit is not currently in production.
Project Radio JOVE
RADIO ASTRONOMY
Radio JOVE grew from an IDEAS grant. It consists of an electronic and mechanical kit
for building a sensitive radio receiver ($125 for the kit), instructions for building an
antenna capable of picking up Jupiter’s 20 MHz radio emission, and chart-recorder
emulation software for the PC. The kit includes a booklet called Listening to Jupiter.
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The RIGEL Project
The construction of the receiver and antenna are within the range of skills of highschool students.College classes and amateur astronomers interested in radio astronomy
have constructed and operated JOVE receivers. Radio JOVE observations must be made
a night because Earth’s ionosphere becomes opaque at this frequency during th daytime.
The web site is http://radiojove.gsfc.nasa.gov.
This struck me as an excellent opportunity to engage students in a “real” observing
project that runs for a significant fraction of the school year. It involves planning and
executing an experiment and analyzing data that is patterned (radio emission depends
on the satellite Io’s jovicentric longitude) and yet unpredictable from night to night.
The RIGEL Project
AUTOMATED TELESCOPE
The Rigel Project is a University-of-Iowa and Torus Technologies joint venture to
develop a high-performance 50 cm telescope for teaching astronomy lab courses at the
university level. It has been in development for ten years, and is apparently now functional with a 37 cm f/14 Cassegrain telescope equipped with an Apogee AP8 CCD camera, a ten-place filter wheel, and 2048-pixel spectrophotometer that operates from 300
to 1000 nm at 1 nm resolution. Pointing accuracy is 30 second of arc r.m.s.; the pixel
size of 0.96 seconds of arc; and the system can image a 19th-magnitude supernova in a
60-second integration. On a winter night, the system can capture about 550 images.
Robert Mutel heads up this project.
For the interested teachers, the greatest attraction may be the 300-page lab manual with
24 experiments. This could be a gold mine for developing a similar program, or creating
a more modest program of your own. Ten of the experiments are available on-line at
http://denali.physics.uiowa.edu/rigel.
SIMBAD, VizieR, and Aladin
ASTRONOMICAL
DATABASE
Simbad, VizieR, and Aladin are databases of information on celestial objects operated
by the Centre de Donnes Astronomiques de Strasbourg, in France. Simbad contains
basic data, names, and bibliographic information; VizieR is a relational database containing 2,900 catalogues; Aladin is a databases of images from the DSS1 and DSS2 sky
surveys, as well as selected MAMA fields. All objects in the Simbad database can be
plotted as overlays on Aladin images. Access in the US is through http://simbad.harvard.edu/.
These databases are less open than the ADS. Simbad requires a usderid and password
obtainable through email to [email protected]. The resources could be valuable
for planning CCD imaging for a student observing project, and in identifying or reducing CCD images obtained in a student observing project.
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Resources for Teaching Astronomy
StarDial
StarDial
DATA MINING
Stardial is a CCD camera located on the roof of the Astronomy Building at the University of Illinois in Urbana, IL. The camera has operated continuously since 1996, imaging a band of the sky centered on declination –4° by drift scanning a Kodak KAF 400
CCD at the focus of a 50 mm f/2 camera lens. The field of view is 5° wide by 8° high.
Every 15 minutes, the Stardial archives an image. Each image contains some 500 stars
down to magnitude 12.5 and suitable for differential photometry; an average of 20,000
stars surveyed per night.
Stardial data is available to anyone via the web. All images are archived in JPEG and
compressed FITS format, and organized in directories by year, month, and day. Within
the day directory, the filename of the image gives its date and right ascension; i.e., the
JPEG image archive is located at archive/1998/10/02/, and the file name for right ascension 5h30m is 10020530.jpg. Images are taken regardless of the weather, so approximately 60% of all images are featureless or partial due to clouds.
For schools without ready access to other sky data, Stardial offers interesting possibilities for “discovering” objects such as asteroids, variable stars, etc., as well as clouds and
airplanes. “Mining” the data hidden in the five-year run of data offers many opportunities. For example, the fields at 7h15m and 20h45m each contain four Mira-class longperiod variable stars. The web site suggests many “data mining” projects possible with
Stardial images.
Stardial is a monument to the value of a simple, modest data-collection system operating over an extended period of time. Access it via http://www.astro.uiuc.edu/stardial/.
2MASS
INFRARED SKY SURVEY
“2MASS” stands for the “2-Micron All-Sky Survey.” It is survey of the entire sky in
three infrared wavelengths, and all of the observations are available on the web as an
atlas of digital images. There is also a catalog of 300,000,00 stars and 1,000,000 galaxies observed by the survey. While 2MASS is a professional survey, advanced students
can compare their own CCD observations in visible and infrared light with the same
objects at longer wavelengths.
Access the 2MASS through http://pegasus.astro.umass.edu.
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Brief Abstracts of AAS Sessions
Brief Abstracts of AAS Sessions
A full description of these papers will be posted on the FOPMO web site so you can
learn more about each talk and/or paper. —Rick Kang
SOLAR SYSTEM
Update on the Solar System. (Heidi Hammel) NEAR lands on Eros, Mars shows more
geology of water flows, colors on Jupiter not understood and not much water found,
Uranus’ atmosphere changing as sunlight hits new areas, other Plutos possible in Kuiper
Belt.
Solar System Formation. (Doug Lin) Described the dynamics of planetary formation
in the proto-planetary disk. Perturbations lead to instabilities and eccentricities, thus
migration of planet inward or outward is possible. Stable orbit is prerequisite to forming life.
Solar System Formation Simulations. (Hal Levison) Need “kick start” in simulator,
some planets fall into Sun, many systems eccentric or unstable, giant planets control
inner planets and bombardments.
Clues to Solar System Formation from Meteorite Composition. (Frank Shu) Characteristics of meteorites indicate that the Solar System formed from disk detached from
Sun, material swirled through flares, T-Tauri disk/jet model.
EXTRASOLAR PLANETS
NASA’s Vision for the Future. (Dan Goldin) NASA has a cool video about futuristic
spacecraft. Audience challenged to build 6- to 7-meter NGST, then twice bigger. Low
density materials key design.
Terrestrial Planet Finder Survey Project. (Anne Kinney, NASA-HST) The TPF survey will look at 150 F, G, and K class stars to search for Earth-like planets and clues to
origins of life.
Extra-Solar Planets. (Geoff Marcy) Data indicates about 7 percent of stars have planets; so far over 50 systems, mostly Jupiters in elliptical orbits, have been found. There
may be lots of Earths!
Terrestrial Planet Finder Update. (Teams from TRW, Lockheed-Martin, Boeing SVS,
JPL-Ball) Need aperture of many meters, possibly a flying configuration with a coronograph to block star and using interferometry to resolve planet.
Transit Observations and Kepler Mission. (Bill Borucki) Large format camera to
search for transits of planets, 100,000 stars at a time. More sensitive than Doppler technique.
Terrestrial Planet Finder Precursor. (A. Baglin) French Corot Mission and ESA
Eddington Mission hope to survey several thousand stars each over 3-year periods,
starting in 2004.
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Resources for Teaching Astronomy
Brief Abstracts of AAS Sessions
STELLAR PHYSICS
Modeling Black Holes and Gamma Ray Bursters. (Craig Wheeler) Toothpaste tube
model—collapsing central compact object, spinning, creates major dynamo that beams
strong polar jets, tearing object apart.
Update on Black Holes. (Roger Blandford) Most galaxies appear to harbor supermassive black holes. Calculates parameters of black holes, observations indicate black holes
exist beyond reasonable doubt and confirm parameters. Related to galaxy formation.
Solar Activity. (Craig DeForest) Current instruments yield great detail on Sun. Differential rotation of radiative zone versus convective zone in Sun causes magnetic shear
which generates flares and CMEs. Coronal heating and connection between flares and
CMEs still not understood.
Studying Black Holes and Active Galactic Nucleii via X-Rays. (Paul Nandra) High
resolution at X-ray wavelengths lets us peer close to black holes; potential for 100,000
times the resolution of HST. Helps characterize black holes, confirms what Roger
Blandford said, although spin evidence isn’t compelling.
Discs and Low Mass Stars. (Panel discussion) Dwarf stars—clsasses M.N,L,T—have
been detected and characterized. Low-mass stars could make up 60 percent of galactic
disk stars, unknown binary population.
COSMOLOGY
Six Eras of the Universe. (John Mather) The eras are: 1.) Primordial Era; 2.) Stelliferous Era (now); 3.) Degenerate Era (dwarf stars survive, matter decays); 4.) Black Hole
Era; 5.) Dark Era (dilute elementary particles, dark matter); and 6.) the Lonely Era
(everything has become very far apart).
Parameters of the Cosmic Background Radiation. (Wayne Hu) Correlating fine resolution of temperature variation in CMB versus angular size yields peaks that tell us
about the early structure of the Universe. Seems to confirm “flat” Universe model and
“Dark Energy” observations. Excellent info and graphics at http://background.uchicago.edu/
Dark Matter Problems. (Donald Linden-Bell) Ninety percent of Universe’s composition is unknown. Distribution and motions of standard dark matter have theoretical and
observational problems. Could Pristine White Dwarfs (non-fusing pure hydrogen stars)
be the missing mass? HST has found a few candidates by proper motions, but how are
they created?
Einstein’s Blunder. (Alex Filippenko) Excellent talk on the existence, non-existence,
or value of Lambda; based on Type IA white dwarf supernovas that have been and are
being observed in distant galaxies. These SNe are magnitudes fainter than expected
implying that galaxies are farther away, implying that the expansion of the Universe is
accelerating and that Lambda—a new type of energy—does exist.
SuperNova Acceleration Probe (SNAP). (Saul Perlmutter & team) The SNAP instrument will search for more supernovas in distant galaxies.
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Brief Abstracts of AAS Sessions
Star Streams in the Milky Way. (Heather Morrison) Rare outer galactic halo star
streams appear to originate from accretion of a satellite galaxy. This may be an ongoing
process; the Sagitarrius Dwarf galaxy is the next to be accreted.
Large Scale Structure. (Freutling, Melott, Barkhouse, Croom, Colless, Malyshkin) A
real frontier area in astronomical research. Involves measuring distributions and cluster
shapes by survey of quasars, observing changes in luminosity over age of galaxies.
Starting to yield cosmological parameters.
Gamma Ray Bursts. (Peter Meszaros) The most distant/energetic objects yet found.
Rarer than supernovas but perhaps one-third of the radiation from cosmological distances. Might these be neutron star collisions?
Primordial Fog Particles. (Carl Gibson) Unorthodox idea that numerous Uranus-sized
blobs of H and He (PFPs) formed from turbulence of Big Bang, and are now the baryonic dark matter.
ASTRONOMY EDUCATION
Hands On Universe. (Sheron Snyder and John Kolena) Using real data so students can
measure photometric and astrometric changes over time. Great ideas but relatively
unsophisticated software.
Mars Quest Project and Display. (Cheri Morrow) The Space Science Institute, collaborating with private corporations, runs this and other traveling interactive exhibits that
can be updated on the fly.
NASA’s Space Grant Program. (William Hiscock) This service/outreach in education
is NASA and state funded. There are several hundred participants serving millions of
public. Tying astronomy outreach to timely sky events works well.
Community Outreach Through Introductory Projects. (Daniel Fleisch) Students are
required to complete project that would outreach to the local community; projects
include lectures, models, and star parties.
Opportunities for Participation in NASA Space Science. (Jill Marshall) These programs are in the beta-testing stage. The IMAGE project is auroral monitoring, AIS is
access to digital data, and POETRY is Public Outreach, Education, Teaching, Reaching
Youth.
International Dark Sky Association Community Work. (Elizabeth Alvarez de
Castillo) Students explore community lighting issues by making observations of sky
and researching issues of quality lighting.
Astronomy in Everyday Life. (Chuck Stone) Connects everyday popular experiences
and vocabulary to astronomy. Includes the Playground Planetarium and a pipe-mounted
equatorial solar projection box.
Kinesthetic Astronomy for “At-Risk” Students. (Cheri Morrow) In this project, students use their bodies to simulate positions, locations, motions of Solar System objects.
Observe and describe model.
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Resources for Teaching Astronomy
Brief Abstracts of AAS Sessions
High School Courses for Success in College. (Phil Sadler) Avoid “survey” courses,
select limited concepts, use variety of teaching methods, beware preconceptions, use
study groups, depth not breadth.
The Copernican Myth. (David Danielson) Copernicus made us think more critically
about our orientation but did not “dethrone” Earth, as medieval thinkers never placed
Earth at the center of the Universe.
POSTER PAPERS
Use of S-Extractor Software to determine type of object. Point-Spread-Function
(PSF) is a method of differentiating between stars and galaxies in an image.
Galaxy M33. Distortions in this galaxy may be evidence that there is a dark companion
galaxy nearby.
Galaxy M51. Appears to be Type 2 (low luminosity) Seyfert (active) galaxy, with radio
lobe and jet that distort and change in brightness.
Galaxy M82. Submillimeter and X-ray band radiation indicate M82 contains superbubble of hot gas, perhaps due to 2 huge black holes in core.
Pari (Pisgah) Radio and Visual Observatory. This observatory in North Carolina
offers data to students.
Planet Search. Several teams are conducting search by looking for photometric dip
indicating that a planet has partially occulted a star; such eclipses are relatively easy to
detect.
Compression of Matter in Early Universe. Like a piston in bucket of water, photons
slamming into dark and regular matter produce acoustic frequency oscillations are still
detectable. The graph of this signal (see Hu’s paper) tells about early structure.
Resources for Teaching Astronomy
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