AstronomyTeacher

Molding a Nebula From a Star - New York Times

1. Return papers.
2. review responses to exam replacing planet test o/r
3. return h-r diagrams, answer questions, turn in.
4. brightness lab followup-questions - reassign, due friday. If you've already done it, don't redo it.

Brightness vs. distance questions for post-lab and pre-qualifiers:
(This is homework)

1. If a light source is measured with a light probe at a distance of 2 meters and reads 1500 lumens (a brightness unit similar to what our probes report) what will it read at a distance of:
a. 4 meters?
b. 10 meters?
c. 100 meters?
d. 1,000,000 meters?

2. Why is the brightness and distance relationship called the "inverse square law"? What is an "inverse square"?

3. Two stars are observed through a telescope using a CCD camera. The first star (A) is 10 light years away and is known to be identical to star (B). Star B is observed to be 1/25 as bright as star A even though it is identical. How far away is star B?

4.Two stars are observed, and they appear to be the same brightness on a CCD. Star C is magnitude 5, and Star D is magnitude 10.
a. Which one is brighter?
b. How many times brighter is it?
c. How many times farther away is the dim one?

5. Consider two real stars. Kruger 60 B is magnitude +11.3, and Barnard's star is magnitude +9.54.
a. Which one is brighter?
b. What is the magnitude difference?
c. How many times brighter is the bright one?
d. How many times dimmer is the dim one?
e. The parallax of Barnard's star is 0.549. How far away is it in parsecs?
f. How far away is Kruger 60?

Buzz Aldrin Seeks to Alter Image of Space - Yahoo! News

The final exam will be multiple-choice only, and will cover the following topics:

Constellations
Names of easily visible stars and constellations
significance of the zodiac constellations
Asterisms such as the Big Dipper or the Summer Triangle
"star hopping" such as "arc to Arcturus"

Celestial coordinates
altitude and azimuth
right ascension and declination

Brightness and Distance
Magnitudes - definition
Converting brightness counts to magnitudes
Comparing brightnesses of different magnitudes
absolute and apparent magnitudes

Spectra
emission, absorption, and continuous spectra
spectra of the elements
the electromagnetic spectrum
spectral classes of stars (equivalent to color and temperature)
Plotting HR diagrams
estimating the ages of clusters from HR diagrams

Stellar Evolution
Star birth
dark nebulas, emission nebulas, open clusters, globular clusters, novas, supernovas, white dwarfs, red dwarfs, black dwarfs, brown dwarfs, black holes, neutron stars, pulsars

Galaxies
Active Galaxies
Unified model of active galactic nuclei
hubble classification
expansion of the universe

Cosmology
The Big Bang - evidence and significance
Dark energy
Dark Matter

CNN.com - Bright spot on Titan baffles scientists - May 26, 2005

Today is a lesson on stellar evolution, tying together stuff we'e been saying in APODS all year. There are a couple of labs left for us to cover: Spectral Classification/element identification and our nova search.

CNN.com - NASA: Voyager I%uFFFDenters solar system's final frontier - May 25, 2005

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Lens method finds far-off world

Role Reversal: Planet Controls a Star

Catalog Page for PIA07941

The results of the planet test--the open reponse portion in particular-- were so bad, it is obvious I need to do a better job teaching the material. The test scores are thrown out, and we will spend perhaps a week reteaching the material and we will retake the open response portion again (with new values inserted.)

The topics specifically we need to cover are:
Unique characteristics of the major planetary and satellites of the solar system.
Newton's Law of Gravity. Calculating force and calculating acceleration.
Computing quantities based on Kepler's Laws including planetary transfer orbits.
Measuring ellipses and isolating values from the drawings.

Too many of you skipped every math question for this to be just a bad day of testing.

Today, we'll begin with notes followed up by extensive homework on each type of problem.

CNN.com - Students' muffin�headed for�space - May 17, 2005

NOAA News Online (Story 2437)

Space Politics: FY05 budget, plan B

An activity will be conducted which has students plot an H-R diagram and answer some questions about it.

Ms. Domenichelli will provide the assessments which were half-done and the assessements not-done for the astronomy students who missed them. You will use this time to complete the assessment and turn it in, which will take approximately an hour.

For students who finish the assessment and for those not taking the assessment, a vocabulary puzzle will be provided for the next units we will study.

Earth science test for juniors. Juniors who took the test already and seniors, you will be asked to work on a worksheet of problems related to the brightness and magnitudes of stars. Students taking the test can work on the assignment after the exam.

Brightness vs. Distance Lab for most students.

We're not doing a big writeup here, but we want to have a data table, graph, and a curve fit or model for the data.

Those students exempt from the lab will be asked to work on major projects.

2nd and 4th period classes will be surveyed once again for the limiting magnitude observation. We Need This Data Now.

After the lab, as time permits, an overview of spectra and spectral classes of stars in anticipation of next week.

We also need to make a specific signup of who is taking the assessment.

Brightness vs. distance questions for post-lab and pre-qualifiers:
(This is homework)

1. If a light source is measured with a light probe at a distance of 2 meters and reads 1500 lumens (a brightness unit similar to what our probes report) what will it read at a distance of:
a. 4 meters?
b. 10 meters?
c. 100 meters?
d. 1,000,000 meters?

2. Why is the brightness and distance relationship called the "inverse square law"? What is an "inverse square"?

3. Two stars are observed through a telescope using a CCD camera. The first star (A) is 10 light years away and is known to be identical to star (B). Star B is observed to be 1/25 as bright as star A even though it is identical. How far away is star B?

4.Two stars are observed, and they appear to be the same brightness on a CCD. Star C is magnitude 5, and Star D is magnitude 10.
a. Which one is brighter?
b. How many times brighter is it?
c. How many times farther away is the dim one?

5. Consider two real stars. Kruger 60 B is magnitude +11.3, and Barnard's star is magnitude +9.54.
a. Which one is brighter?
b. What is the magnitude difference?
c. How many times brighter is the bright one?
d. How many times dimmer is the dim one?
e. The parallax of Barnard's star is 0.549. How far away is it in parsecs?
f. How far away is Kruger 60?

For those of you who talked your way out of it, you get a day off.

Today we will review a series of tips on how to take multiple-choice test items. You will be asked to review the California Science Standards that we have covered so far. (scroll down...for some reason the table code is adding unnecessary spaces).

CA science Standard	Unit	Topic	Standard number	Standard letter
Earth Science:1.a	Earth Science	Earth’s Place in the Universe	1. Astronomy and planetary exploration reveal the structure, scale, and change of the solar system over time. As a basis for understanding this concept, students know:	a. how the differences and similarities among the sun, the terrestrial planets, and the gas planets may have been established during the formation of the solar system.
Earth Science:1.b	Earth Science	Earth’s Place in the Universe	1. Astronomy and planetary exploration reveal the structure, scale, and change of the solar system over time. As a basis for understanding this concept, students know:	b. evidence from Earth and moon rocks for the solar system’s formation from a nebular cloud of dust and gas approximately 4.6 billion years ago.
Earth Science:1.c	Earth Science	Earth’s Place in the Universe	1. Astronomy and planetary exploration reveal the structure, scale, and change of the solar system over time. As a basis for understanding this concept, students know:	c. evidence from geological studies of the Earth and other planets that the early Earth was very different from today.
Earth Science:1.d	Earth Science	Earth’s Place in the Universe	1. Astronomy and planetary exploration reveal the structure, scale, and change of the solar system over time. As a basis for understanding this concept, students know:	d. evidence that the planets are much closer than the stars.
Earth Science:1.e	Earth Science	Earth’s Place in the Universe	1. Astronomy and planetary exploration reveal the structure, scale, and change of the solar system over time. As a basis for understanding this concept, students know:	e. the sun is a typical star and is powered by nuclear reactions, primarily the fusion of hydrogen to form helium.
Earth Science:1.f	Earth Science	Earth’s Place in the Universe	1. Astronomy and planetary exploration reveal the structure, scale, and change of the solar system over time. As a basis for understanding this concept, students know:	f. evidence for the dramatic effects of asteroid impacts in shaping the surface of planets and their moons, and in mass extinctions of life on Earth.
Earth Science:1.g	Earth Science	Earth’s Place in the Universe	1. Astronomy and planetary exploration reveal the structure, scale, and change of the solar system over time. As a basis for understanding this concept, students know:	g.* evidence for the existence of planets orbiting other stars.
Earth Science:2.a	Earth Science	Earth’s Place in the Universe	2. Earth-based and space-based astronomy reveals the structure, scale, and change over time of stars, galaxies and the universe. As a basis for understanding this concept, students know:	a. the solar system is located in an outer edge of the disc-shaped Milky Way galaxy which spans 100,000 light years.
Earth Science:2.b	Earth Science	Earth’s Place in the Universe	2. Earth-based and space-based astronomy reveals the structure, scale, and change over time of stars, galaxies and the universe. As a basis for understanding this concept, students know:	b. galaxies are made of billions of stars and form most of the visible mass of the universe.
Earth Science:2.c	Earth Science	Earth’s Place in the Universe	2. Earth-based and space-based astronomy reveals the structure, scale, and change over time of stars, galaxies and the universe. As a basis for understanding this concept, students know:	c. evidence that all elements with an atomic number greater than that of Lithium have been formed by nuclear fusion in stars.
Earth Science:2.d	Earth Science	Earth’s Place in the Universe	2. Earth-based and space-based astronomy reveals the structure, scale, and change over time of stars, galaxies and the universe. As a basis for understanding this concept, students know:	d. stars differ in their life cycles, and visual, radio, and X-ray telescopes collect data that reveal these differences.
Earth Science:2.e	Earth Science	Earth’s Place in the Universe	2. Earth-based and space-based astronomy reveals the structure, scale, and change over time of stars, galaxies and the universe. As a basis for understanding this concept, students know:	e.* accelerators boost subatomic particles to energy levels that simulate conditions in the stars and in early history of the universe before stars formed.
Earth Science:2.f	Earth Science	Earth’s Place in the Universe	2. Earth-based and space-based astronomy reveals the structure, scale, and change over time of stars, galaxies and the universe. As a basis for understanding this concept, students know:	f.* evidence that the color, brightness and evolution of a star are determined by a balance between gravitational collapse and nuclear fusion.
Earth Science:2.g	Earth Science	Earth’s Place in the Universe	2. Earth-based and space-based astronomy reveals the structure, scale, and change over time of stars, galaxies and the universe. As a basis for understanding this concept, students know:	g.* how the red-shift from distant galaxies and the cosmic background radiation provide evidence for the "big bang" model that suggests that the universe has been expanding for 10 to 20 billion years.

Today we will play a game intended to teach you about the importance of scientific publication, peer review, and funding of scientific research.