AstronomyTeacher

Contemporary article on current black hole research.

FOXNews.com - Astronomers: Black Holes Incredibly Energy-Efficient Engines - Science News | Current Articles

Wednesday, April 26th, 2006, 7 pm:

Astronomer Ron Marzke
of San Francisco State University
will give a non-technical, illustrated talk on:

News from the Distant Past: How Galaxies Tell Their Stories
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in the Smithwick Theater,
Foothill College,
El Monte Road and Freeway 280,
in Los Altos Hills, California.

Free and open to the public.
Parking on campus costs $2.

Call the series hot-line at 650-949-7888 for
more information and driving directions.

No background in science will be required for
this talk.
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Dr. Marzke will discuss how astronomers are taking
advantage of the "time machine" built into the travel
time of light in the universe to understand how
galaxies like our own Milky Way formed and evolved.

Light from distant galaxies can take billions of
years to reach our telescopes. But when the light
finally arrives, it brings us news of ancient cosmic
events as they unfold. Dr. Marzke is part of a team
of astronomers who have recently found major
surprises in the light of galaxies from far away and
long ago. In particular, they discovered a surprisingly
large population of massive galaxies which were
already fully assembled when the universe was
less than half its current age.

Dr. Marzke is an associate professor in the
Department of Physics and Astronomy at San
Francisco State. He specializes in measurements
of the structure of galaxies and the stars they contain,
as well as the large-scale distribution of the galaxies.
He is a member of the Gemini Deep-Deep Survey
team, which is probing the history of galaxies.

Co-sponsored by:
* NASA Ames Research Center
* The Foothill College Astronomy Program
* The SETI Institute
* The Astronomical Society of the Pacific.

Why is the sky blue? Facts you should know

There are a number of "henges" around the country. Not on the list, Steve Irvine's keppelhenge (look it up).
America's Stonehenges. Roadside America

Flatland is public doman. The link leads to the Project Gutenberg free all-text version of the book. +

Flatland: a romance of many dimensions (Illustrated) by Edwin Abbott Abbott - Project Gutenberg

I expect schools and amateur astronomers will be observing this. I know I will.

NASA plans probe to blast into moon in water hunt - Yahoo! News

Sometimes I wish these popular articles had a little more meat on them. For example, what is the Venus Express mission going to be able to tell us that Magellan did not?
This is as technical as the article gets:
Our planetary neighbour's hostile climate could also hold answers to how global warming will affect Earth in future decades, helping to constrain computer models of climate change.

"Our prime objective is to study the processes that are going on inside Venus' atmosphere," Gerhard Schwehm, Esa's head of planetary missions, told the BBC News website.

"Nearly all the instruments give us information on either the composition of the atmosphere, temperature profile, or circulation. We want to see how the system works there because there are still many mysteries about Venus."

Mission scientists hope to learn what causes Venus' atmosphere to rotate much faster than the planet below. The craft will also study a swirling double vortex at the planet's north pole, to discover how it remains stable and where it gets its energy from.

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Probe makes encounter with Venus

An excellent HR diagram reference, with good links for studying.

HR Diagram and Stellar Evolution

Photos of new versions lunar exploration space suits, and more.
Photo Index 1

Our classes use several of the programs mentioned here including image J.
ONLamp.com -- The Software of Space Exploration

Here's a place you can post your astronomy teaching ideas to share with others. Bookmark the site, it's a good one!

Center for Astronomy Education - Ideas from the classroom