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What Objects To Focus On For School Astronomy?
IceDiver writes "I am a teacher in a small rural school. My Grade 9 students are doing a unit on astronomy this spring. I have access to a 4" telescope, and would like to give my students a chance to use it. We will probably only be able to attempt observations on a couple of nights because of weather and time restrictions. I am as new to telescope use as my students, so I have no idea what objects would look good through a 4" lens. What observations should I attempt to have my students make? In other words, how can I make best use of my limited equipment and time to give my students the best experience possible?"
Advantages: Easy to find in the sky. Viewable during daytime hours.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
I'd suggest objects that are very easy to find, so the students don't spend the whole time searching for them.
Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, Venus, M31 (Andromeda galaxy), Orion Nebula (M42) are a good start.
1. The moon.
2. How about the moon?
3. You might want to consider the moon.
4. Have you given any thought to the moon?
No special filters needed, and it's by *far* the most visually impressive with a small aperture. If you can get appropriate filters, the sun is another good option. Everything else.... you might see phases on some of the larger bodies. And you'll probably be able to see the Jovian moons as points of light. That's about it. Perhaps a faint blur for the Andromeda galaxy if you're in a good location.
But the moon looks awesome even through a small scope.
Kneel Before Christ!
Do NOT look at Sun with remaining eye.
No brain, no pain.
A great book for beginners is Turn Left at Orion, by Guy Consolmagno
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Turn-Left-Orion-Hundred-Telescope/dp/0521781906
Planets and clusters are probably the easiest objects to find with a 4" telescope (same size as mine). Planets are really easy to find since you can usually spot them, and you should be able to see some detail- moons around Jupiter, and Saturn's rings.
Clusters (globular, open, etc) may be a bit harder to find and harder to see, but some of them are impressive with even a 4" telescope. The Messier objects shouldn't be too hard to find with a star chart.
Different things are visible at different times, although a four inch telescope is really only going to be able to see the the brightest objects. A little better than binoculars, but surprisingly little better after you account for the perception boost binoculars get by letting you use both eyes.
If you're talking about a nearby observation opportunity, then let me recommend Sky & Telescope - At a Glance and Human Spaceflight Realtime Data as sources of interesting things to look for. You can also nearly always find a satellite or two around dusk, if you know where to look. Nasa has some pages about that as well.
Make sure you have some information to talk about about everything you plan to look at, since most of the class will be standing around the telescope rather than actually looking through it at any given time.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
You didn't mention the location of your school (probably wisely); however, it would be useful to know at least the vague region in which you live, as it impacts what's visible at different times of the year.
The moon, Venus, and Mars are good places to start. NASA has a "Near-Earth Object" program (http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/) that may be of interest to you.
Also, while man-made objects aren't necessarily directly related to astronomy, the International Space Station is also quite visible with the naked eye; I'm sure a telescope would make the observation much better. Again, this depends on your location and when the ISS will be visible there.
"You will pay for your lack of vision..." - Emperor Palpatine to Ray Charles
The Moon. Jupiter and its moons. Saturn. Venus. The Orion Nebula. The Andromeda Galaxy.
And get out there and look at the dramatic and easy stuff. Jupiter and its moons is really cool to watch. And you just can't go wrong with the moon. All of the things I listed above should be easy to find with a small telescope. Looking for much more is going to be frustrating and boring for a group of students. Looking at stars is going to be very boring (stars look like points of light, even with the best telescopes). Go grab a copy of http://www.stellarium.org/ to help you find things and you should be good to go.
-Erik -- --This message was written using 73% post-consumer electrons--
Here is a good beginners guide to finding objects and telescope use: http://www.rocketroberts.com/astro/first.htm
http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/index.html
You save only 59 seconds over 8 miles by going 75 instead of 65. Do you really have to pass that guy? Do the Math!
The moon, particularly when it's NOT full, as there is more detail to see when it's not full. Someone mentioned Jupiter and it's moons. Observe them over several nights, have your students sketch what they see, discuss why the moons are in different positions each night/hour. Get a copy of "Skyways" from the Royal AStronomical Society of Canada - it's a resource for teachers (http://www.rasc.ca/publications/index.shtml). The Pleiades star cluster is always beautiful. Saturn will be high in the south east and is always nice even in a small telescope. Mars will be high in Cancer next to the Bee-hive cluster. Both are wonderful small-scope objects and will be very close together. The three bright galaxies in Leo, "The Leo Triplet" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Triplet) will all fit in a field of view nicely. Good luck!
Hi, I help run an astronomy group (San Diego Astronomy Association) and I think I can help you out - feel free to contact me directly if you have questions.
:)
Right now I would recommend showing off:
The Pleiades (M45) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleiades_(star_cluster)
The Great Orion Nebula (M42) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_Nebula
The Andromeda Galaxy (M31) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andromeda_galaxy
You can also check out the planets - right now Mars is pretty close and bright, but it isn't much to look at through a 4" telescope. You can show off Saturn, but it doesn't rise until kind of late. You should be able to see the rings, but right now they are edge-on.
Depending on where you are located, you may also be able to check out some smaller galaxies and nebula. Also, depending on where you are located, get in contact with an astronomy group and see if you can visit a local amateur observatory. We have a site about an hour from down town San Diego where we have a 22" telescope available for public viewing once a month and we also have public events held almost weekly where we bring telescopes generally around 10" in size (I bring my 16" on clear nights).
Others have joked about using your telescope to point at the Sun - obviously don't do it. Even pointing the scope at the Sun will permanently destroy eyepieces and coatings on optics - and if you happen to look through it, say good bye to your vision. Permanently. However, if you can get yourself a solar filter to put over the telescope, you can safely observe the Sun - which is pretty interesting. You should be able to see sun spots and perhaps prominences with the right kind of filter.
Good luck, and clear skies!
-Bill
Link to general visibility -- http://homepage.ntlworld.com/mjpowell/Astro/Naked-Eye-Planets/Naked-Eye-Planets.htm
Your geographical location doesn't matter too much in spring, as you'll get plenty of viewing along the ecliptic.
I think the linked site is for northern hemisphere. Hope your kids understand ecliptic before you're done.
More links like it? google terms: planets visibility 2010
Although it isn't actually looking at the objects with your own telescope, all of the data that the Hubble Space Telescope creates is free to the public. To use the data you will need a copy of Adobe Photoshop, but once you have that it can be great fun to create the same sort of images you see from the Hubble Heritage site. To use the data (that you get in fits format) in Photoshop, you need to download the "Fits Liberator" from the http://www.spacetelescope.org/ site (check the projects tab). You can then get the data from http://archive.stsci.edu/hst/search.php (you will have to create an account).
No matter where you go, there you are. So Enjoy it.
Venus will become an evening star in the next few months. If your observations are over a few weeks, it would be an excellent evening target as it will go through its phases, much like our own moon does. If the observations are around twilight, you can even have them attempt to see Venus while the sun is still up by looking in the same part of the sky when the sun is up. It gets harder with age(sigh) but I remember easily being able to do it when I was around the age of grade 9.
The Moon focus on the shadow line, or a time when its around 1 week bfore a full moon, as the terminator(shadow) will show excellent surface relief of features.
Jupiter will be probably be only an early morning target during that time, so thats probably out.
Saturn isnt going to be a very good target, other than to show it as a planet, because it is in the part of its orbit where the rings are tilted almost edge on to earth.
Globular Clusters M13 in Hercules would be an excellent target.
Planetary Nebula The 'ring nebula' in the constellation Lyra will be a excellent target for evening viewing, if its late enough, as from most locations in the US it appears almost at the zenith
Double Stars Even through a 4" scope you can see some amazing color contrasts. Albireo in the constellation Cygnus is one of the best, with one red, one blue star. Also, you can go in to some detail about the different types of telescopes, and their functions.
But most importantly, focus on the history of Astronomy itself. There is a rich history over thousands of years of astronomers that have taken us all the way to where we are now, and we wouldnt be here without those giants of the past; Gallileo Gallelie, Nikolas Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Charles Messier(hes the 'M' in all those objects...M13, M31, etc), Edwin Hubble, Edmund Halley.
I envy you. Have Fun!
In grade 10 the most impressive viewing I had was a daytime viewing of Jupiter. We looked at multiple planets during the day, it was very cool. It was an elective astronomy class though, so everyone there was very interested.
The moon is good, but planets, depending on what is in the sky, would also be very cool. You can really see that Mars is red.
Show them whatever inner planets are visible this time of year and they'll probably never forget it. Venus, Mars and Jupiter are awesome... and show them how you found them in the sky.
Some suggestions:
- Start with the planets, and bright messier objects (brighter than magnitude 4 to start with). Don't waste too much time on fainter deep sky objects - you need a larger scope (bigger aperture) and/or low light pollution.
- Take a look at the zodical constellations and plan ahead to look at what's visible at the time of year your course is on.
- Get a planisphere, and a book or two.
- Take a look at the free astronomy software out there - especially Cartes Du Ceil/Skycharts, Celestia, Stellarium. There's excellent paid stuff too but start with what's free.
- Get in touch with your local astronomy club and talk to them - some of them will have been in it for decades and will intimately know what's viewable from your location for a given time of year. You might even be able to get one to come out for an observing night.
- Look up the brightest stars in wikipedia
- Find a local professional astronomer and ask if they know of any school programs your school can get involved in. There may be a chance to get the kids to do some real science
- Get a hold of a cheap pair of 7x50 binoculars. Binoculars are easier to use than a telescope, can be mounted to a camera tripod if you wish, and easier to learn to use before stepping up to a scope.
- Create some basic analogue setting circles for your telescope and learn to align it so you can be sure you know what you're looking at
- Make sure your kids know what they're looking at. Kids are use to big visuals and if they don't understand what they're seeing even the most impressive sites like Saturn's rings will be a let down
The web is your friend. Lots out there. Not all related to observing. Google beginner astronomy.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
The Moon is probably a great place to start and the rest of this thread suggests several other natural satellites such as Jupiter or Mars but you can also try finding some artificial satellites as well like the International Space Station (ISS) It orbits fast enough that the station is visible several times each day all day long, it's just a matter of tracking it. How much detail you can see I don't know, probably not a lot but the fact that you can see something man made hovering overhead in space is amazing in of it self.
1) The moon - easiest to find, everyone enjoys seeing it up close for the 1st time. Focus on Tycho crater and terminator.
2) Saturn and Jupiter - next in line of ease. details apparent in even the smallest of scopes. You might get lucky and see Saturns rings at a large angle, or a transit of one of Jupiter's moons.
3) Venus and mars - Though not that difficult to find, the detail, other than venus's phases can be a little disappointing.
4) Some of the easier Messier objects -
- Globular clusters - once you practice, they are easy to find in binoculars. Will be very surprising to students who are unfamiliar with Globular Clusters.
- Open clusters - Pleiades for example
- Galaxies - Andromeda would be the easiest, next in line is probably M81, M83
Once you get down to #4, you really need to practice finding them before attempting it for the 1st time in front of the students.
Prof. Farnsworth - "Oh a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"
Why not let your students choose some/all of the targets, subject to final vetting (or pre-screening) by you? In this way they gain a feeling of ownership over the process and generally become more invested in the subject matter. You could even point them to Stellarium for free home planetarium software to plan their observations.
Whatever you decide to observe, your students will get more out of it if they are actively involved -- i.e., no passive observing. If you have several nights, you could look at Jupiter each night and have them sketch the arrangement of the moons (c.f. Galilei 1610). If you have a solar filter, you could do the same thing with sunspots (if any are visible). Venus, Mars, or Saturn's rings may be attractive targets, depending on what you want to do with the observations.
Finally, there are additional astronomy education resources at the Astronomy Education Review, a free online journal.
My advice is to focus mostly on the sky rather than the telescope. You don't want to have "telescope class".
Invite students to bring binoculars. Find and identify all the constellations you can. They're not just for astrology, they're a great way to orient yourself to the sky.
Plus they're interesting and historical and you can see them with the naked eye. If you have 2 nights, find a planet on the first night and note it's position. On your next night out you can note how it "wandered". "Planet" being greek for "wanderer". Be sure to check out the Big Dipper. One it's stars is an optical binary as well as a telescopic binary. There's a nice little story to be told about ancient people using it to test eyesight. It's a great thing to look at with the naked eye, binoculars, and then the telescope, showing how each tool works relative to the other. Since most of the kids won't have telescopes at home, these are great lessons in how neat astronomy is with just your eyes and/or binoculars. They don't need a telescope to be interested.
If you or somebody in your class has an iphone there are great astronomy apps. StarMap and Distant Suns are both very good and offer free versions that work great in the field.
Also, blankets and tarps are a good thing to bring along. Looking at the sky with the naked eye or binoculars is much more enjoyable lying on one's back. Craning necks is a good way to lose interest fast.
Have Fun!!
Operator, give me the number for 911!
Unrelated to the real topic, but regarding your signature, you realize that isn't helping your case? If I save a minute every 8 miles traveled I'm saving almost an hour off my 400 mile trip, seems like a good idea to me.
I know its not a one night job, but maybe some visual observations of variables for extra credit thru the entire year?
Yeah it is a bit late to start now:
You'll be spending alot of time at the AAVSO website, may as well start here:
http://www.aavso.org/publications/manual/
Basically, you learn two skills, star hopping from beta cep to tau cep, and then you compare the brightness of tau cep with its neighbors which have fixed, known magnitudes to estimate tau cep magnitude today.
http://www.aavso.org/images/starhopping.gif
It has the virtue of being free, if nothing else.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I had looked at the moon forever with the naked eye, and a few times through a couple of lenses, including a backyard telescope. Then, because there was going to be an occultation, I had a chance to look at Jupiter through a pair of binocs. I was blown away that something that close had that much structure -- you could see just scads of moons!
To instil a sense of Science, give the kids tools that they can use well beyond your classes. To this day, when I see Orion in the night sky, he seems like an old friend. When I see Mars waxing and waning, it helps me keep track of time through its two year cycle. Have them look at impressive things, but make sure you give them the tools to find the same objects with their naked eyes. Unless these kids become astronomers, they'll spend at most a few hours behind glass, but will have the rest of their lives to look up at the night sky with their eyes.
One of the coolest things I've learned as a closet amateur astronomer is that the dark side of the moon is illuminated by backwash from the earth, or earthshine. OK, that makes sense if you think about it. But this fact was known almost 100 years ago, and we have a nearly complete record of the brightness of the dark side of the moon since then. That record is important because earthshine is directly related to the amount of terrestrial cloud cover, and that is related to climate. I wish I had known that as a kid, because I'd often wondered why you could see the dark side of the moon better (brighter) on some nights than on others.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
NASA has a website for educators:
http://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/index.html
Most missions have a public outreach person who will send materials to teachers for use in their classroom.
And for those joking about looking at the sun, see :
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/classroom/for_students.html
http://stereo.gsfc.nasa.gov/classroom/classroom.shtml
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Many people think that the best time to look at the moon is when it is full. This is the worst time to use a telescope other than when it is cloudy. It is washed out and flat. Try with no more than 1/2 moon then you can see the rough surface due to the shadows. It is worth looking at when full but far better otherwise
The next most important thing is to practice where you will be setting up. You need to be familiar with the sky. Find the planets beforehand so you can point out the ones that are up and some of the major constellations. Remember planets move around a bit as well. If you are some where that is humid, it can be helpful to have a bright spotlight. You can point out locations in the sky. Show them where the Zodiac is (the constellations that the sun rises in and the planets move through). Jupiter and Saturn are also good. If clear and dark enough you can show them the milky way.
Lastly I would hope you have a plan of what to say. I talk about Galileo and the arguments that were being made about the sky before the telescope was pointed at the sky. The moon was thought to be basically featureless and round. Point out the moon and ask them to look at it for a minute. No one had seen a much better view than you are seeing now.
Someone (probably Galileo) first pointed a telescope at the moon and then saw this Prepare for a gasp when they look.
Everything went around the earth, then Jupiter, “see the little dots they move around” and you can see this from night to night in a pattern
One more thing. if your scope does not have a motor mount you will need to frequently move it to make up for the turning of the earth. Also people will bump it and the next person will see nothing but black. This is tricky as they will not tell you if they do not see anything.
Jupiter and its moons are important because of Galileo, and Galileo used Jupiter and moons as an analogy for the Copernican helio-centric model. Venus can also serve that purpose if it is showing a crescent -- the phases of Venus were further support for Copernicus according to Galileao.
Next, point out objects such as the Big Dipper. It actually is a star cluster, only we are too close to it to notice. Work your way out to the Pleiades and the Bee Hive. You can point out that the Pleiades appear on the hood ornament of a popular Japanese car as "Subaru" is the name for the Pleiades in Japan.
Depending on season, try the Orion Nebula as an active formation region of a star cluster, some of the more distance "galactic" star clusters in the Milky Way. Revert to the naked eye and point out the Milky Way (if able depending on light pollution and weather) and the "dark rifts" in the Milky Way (those are not the absence of stars, rather they are the presence of dust -- the heavy elements out of which you and I are made out of and where are heavy elements came from).
Next, try for a globular cluster such as M-13. Tell the story of Harlow Shapley and the discovery that the center of the Milky Way is in Sagittarius instead of us being in the center.
Finally, wrap up with a view of M-31, and explain how Edwin Hubble discovered Cephiad variables in it and discovered it to be remote. Point out Polaris (the North Star) and explain that it is a Cephiad -- that it is a reasonably distant star, but we see it because of its high luminosity. Tell the story of Hubble's discovery of the "spirals" as being "island universes" like our Milky Way, red shift, and what I call the "Copernican Revolution of the 20th Century", where M-31 was the stepping stone to finding out how freakin' large the Universe is and how we are such a small speck in it.
Also, moderate expectations of what they are going to see. Explain that large telescopes taking long photographic or CCD time exposures can show much more dramatic views of the same objects, but they are looking at what they see in those famous pictures with their own eyeball, first hand, through your telescope. Also give them a primer on averted vision on how to see faint objects. Finally, explain that through the telescope what they are seeing of M-31 is mainly the central core, and that M-31 is a much vaster and fainter object that extends well beyond the telescope field.
I think just looking at the stars is not nearly as great as trying to find out how much you can infer from observations.
Astronomy is the probably the science which requires the highest level of skill in inferring information, or trying to get at information in a bit round-about way, as it's kind of difficult to actually modify the universe on a large scale just to test a theory. And in my experience, I'd say inference is a skill not nearly taught enough nowadays - astronomy could be the subject for it.
If you have access to them, the BBC showed a program series called rough science which had a couple of interesting little experiments you could do - like calculating the diameter of a crater on the moon - with the most trivial of things at your disposal, and also trying to come up with a useful margin of error for their own measurements.
In the same program, they then also had a different group trying to measure the diameter of another crater here on earth (which they took the team to), by making the triangulate a point on the other side of the crater (if no crater at hand, you could do a practice session, trying to find the distance from the current position to a landmark nearby -- without allowing the students to actually just walk/drive over and measure the distance, but to gain that information from their own vantage points. (again, also get them to come up with a margin of error).
In both cases, in the end compare the student-found results with actual data...
With my 70mm (2.75") telescope, I can see Saturn's rings more clearly than either of those photos, and 2 cloud bands on Jupiter. What'll influence how well you can see them more than the diameter of your lens is the focal lengths of your telescope and eyepiece and the quality of the lenses. My scope has a 600mm focal length, so with my 9mm eyepiece, I get about 67x magnification (600/9). I have a 2x barlow, which makes the image bigger, but it's not very good quality, so it blurs it so much that it's not worth using.
I'd recommend Jupiter, Saturn, the Orion Nebula and the Pleiades. They're all super easy to locate once you know where to look (you can see them all with the naked eye...just not very well!). Also, definitely get a good look at the moon. It's more interesting when it's not full, since that gives you more relief. Unless you have a filter, with a 4" main lens, the moon is going to be pretty bright.
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