The Classroom Astronomer, #12Lite, November 1, 2021
Visit the Moon's South Pole!; Teachniques--Low Tech Astro Ed--Exploring the Sun, 25% Sale; Discount Subscriptions
Cover Photo - Forget Antarctica, Tour the Moon’s South Pole!
In This Issue:
Italics are Full Subscriber Content Only
Cover Photo and Connection to the Sky - The Lunar South Pole Video
Critical Information - Discount Pricing for Certain Groups of Astronomy
TeachersAstronomical Teachniques - IAU-Shaw: Low Tech Astro—Astronomy During
the Day, So Explore The Sun; Planet Earth;
Low Cost Astrophotography with a Smartphone
Not the Clicker, Use the Laser! Huh?(Astronomy Remotely - 2. Remote Observing — Postponed because of
Tryouts… )The RAP Sheet – Research Abstracts for Practitioners - Call for a Framework
or Reporting Evidence for Life Beyond EarthThe Galactic Times Newsletter Highlights
The Black Friday/End of Year/Holidays with Increased Discount Sale
Critical information:
Homepage and Indexes of Issues by Topic and Issue number: http://www.classroomastronomer.com/newsletter
Subscription and archive (for full subscribers only:
Note: Having had some discussion with astronomy teachers at various international conferences, starting with this issue, we will be introducing regular science but not astronomy classroom teacher, science education student, home school teachers, and “Developing World Teacher” rates. If you are in one of these groups, inquire by email for the rates and links, to “newsletter at classroomastronomer dot com” or click the publisher link below!
Publisher -- Dr. Larry Krumenaker
Connection to the Sky
The Lunar South Pole Video (Cover Story)
If you want to catch the attention of your students, take them some place unusual.
In this case, the Lunar South Pole.
The next NASA lunar space missions, Project Artemis, are intending to take astronauts to there, because there are craters that are permanently shadowed and thus seem to have water ice deposits buried in them. These will be needed clearly for survival purposes, and bases will be built there accordingly.
The vistas will be, um, unearthly.
The Sun will not rise or set much; instead it will cruise around the horizon. Because of the slight tilt of the Moon’s orbit and its own librations (rocking back and forth due to its own polar tilt), the Earth will appear to rise and set in place more or less like a jumping jack…AND it will appear upside down to our standard map view. Twice or more per year, the Sun will be blocked by the Earth, a solar eclipse treat for astronauts, only for Earthlings it will be a lunar eclipse like what we’ll see later in November. Will the Moon’s surface appear reddish? Or Earth’s atmosphere? The rest of the time, the surface of the Moon, like a dune-filled desert, shadows will wave and extend long distances.
NASA made a CGI video of what Artemis astronauts would see, speeded up. You’ll find it on YouTube. Maybe it will inspire students to want to tour the Moon’s South Pole for real….
https://www.youtube.com/watch=?v=D1OQ9UBwuU .
Astronomical Teachniques
* IAU-Shaw: Low Tech Astro—Teach Astronomy During the Day, So Explore The Sun
Astronomy has a bad rap as an expensive hobby, notably because much of its PR comes from expensive magazines showing expensive equipment, such as high-end telescopes, cameras, mounts, and more. Of course, observatories and space-borne satellites don’t come cheap either, and are often not available, or at a high cost, to educators, and whose got a budget for this? Furthermore, astronomy is a night time science, right? School is in the day.
There are actually good reasons for daytime astronomy, and a variety of low cost and low tech ways to teach it. A whole session on Low Tech Astronomy Education, and one also on Daytime Astronomy, took place at the virtual IAU-Shaw meeting out of Heidelberg. Here are some of the reasons why and what you can do with day skies, and cloudy budgets.
Daytime astronomy has the advantage, says T. V. Venkateswaran, an Indian astronomy educator, of being easier to organize, of being easier to be inclusive—especially of girls, in cultures where educating girls and other underserved populations can not do night time activities—and easier when there is a risk of less safe conditions for night time activities. There may be less teacher hesitation with daytime activities as well.
Dr. Breezy Flaquer of San Diego State University points out that when working with Hispanic underserved populations, she finds Low Tech approaches “makes science fun, interesting and approachable….and empowering [of students].” It doesn’t mean low standards or expectations.
In the day, you have the Sun and the Moon, various motions, and with effort, some other objects if you have telescopes available. Let us stick with the Sun for the moment. There are four ways to explore our own star, two of which are Low Tech, one middling tech, and one Not Your Tech. That last one, if you are in possession of a good Internet connection, you simply go online and take a look at images from, say, SOHO, on a daily basis. But that rather defeats the purpose of classroom exploration as a starting educational activity.
The middling tech is using a telescope to directly observe (SAFELY, by projection, preferably, or with valid safe solar filters) or via pinhole or mirror projection, the last also being known as reflected pinhole, observation. With the former and the proper filtering, you can observe the solar disk in something other than strictly visual light, as in H-alpha light, a narrow-band view in the light of hydrogen in the red part of the spectrum. But that starts falling into not-Low Tech classroom astronomy. Let’s stay with Low Tech for now.
A neater view is with reflected pinhole projection. Mr. Venkateswaran made balls filled with sand for stability, the ball on a cylindrical stand such as from cardboard or PVC pipes, with a mirror secured to the ball, framed in a circular mask. This projected a Sun image into a classroom or onto a wall. The farther the throw, the greater the size of the image, and no focusing is required. The round reflection acts as a pinhole lens, or in this case, a telescope mirror, and does that focusing work. Any spots that are of naked eye visibility in size will be easily spotted.
Ghanian educator Sarah Abotsi-Masters had a slightly different approach, and an improvement in one regard. Hers was also a framed mirror, but on a tripod, and it gave perhaps a better image reflected into a darkened room, though that may be troublesome for some classroom teachers elsewhere, being harder to arrange for all daytime hours.
[Ed. Note—At public eclipse parties, I’ve made small children’s memories by taking women’s purse makeup mirrors, already round, and made an eclipse image on their bodies—”Mom! I’ve been eclipsed!” I am sure they remember that!]
With pinhole observations, you can observe sunspots, do daily counts, do plots by position, and trace their paths caused by solar rotation, determine the time of solar rotation (though accuracy requires long timelines because you’ll get different rates if you take only measures using spots near the solar limbs). If you can get the Sun all day in your room, you can determine Earth’s rotation period, too.
The last method is pinhole projection, the simple hole in a piece of, well, anything. Paper, cardboard, or any household utensil such as a cheese grater or flat strainer. Nature can provide such pinhole images, through leaves on trees, holes in a curtain or shade if properly positioned, and I’ve had students contest to see who can make the most crescents by overlapping the fingers of their hands.
Only the largest of sunspots will show this way, and not much scientific observations are likely to be possible but as a cheap entry point to solar observation, pinhole projection is as low tech and low cost as you can get.
As far as eclipse observations to view, here is a list of upcoming eclipses. Be aware that totality itself is safe to observe with unaided eyes—but projections or properly filtered eye-wear is absolutely needed at all other times. But as you will see below, in the Americas you’ve got a few years to wait to see anything, in Europe, a partial next year late, and elsewhere, better chances for partial eclipses. The 12-month period late 2023-early 2024 is prime time.
December 4, 2021 There is a total eclipse….in Antarctica. Not much tourist traffic I suspect for this one. Some tiny bits might be visible in extreme South Africa and southern Australia.
In 2022 there’s a partial eclipse visible in South America, and in October, one in Europe, northeast Africa, Middle East and western Asia.
In 2023, there is a hybrid eclipse—half annular (ring), half total along the Moon’s shadow path, partial elsewhere, in Southeast Asia and Australia, and an annular eclipse in October in the Americas. This one and total solar eclipse in 2024, also in the Americas, are what the world is teeing up for traveling to see.
Beyond this, you enter the realm of telescopic and space-based observations.
One last solar note, Mr. Venkateswaran had one other interesting device, a card with the symbols of all major religions punched in it….cross, Star of David, crescent moon, and more. Held close to paper in the sunlight, they made their silhouettes; move back, they all made pinhole solar images. An interesting object lesson.
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Astronomical Teacherniques
IAU-Shaw: Planet Earth;
A way to do the Eratosthenes Experiment without a partner somewhere but locally using landmarks, and an in-class demonstration of how the Earth’s atmosphere scatters sunlight to make blue midday and reddish sunset skies.
Low Cost Astrophotography with a Smartphone
A real world demonstration using instructions from a journal article, taking constellation and Moon photos using manual settings in your Camera App.
Not the Clicker, Use the Laser! Huh?
A different way to get student responses to ABCD types of questions, using cheap lasers, and why maybe you shouldn’t.
The RAP Sheet – Research Abstracts for Practitioners
- Call for a Framework for Reporting Evidence for Life Beyond Earth
NASA has a proposal for a progressive scale to use in communicating results of experiments that purport finding evidence of extraterrestrial life, past or present. Here’s how to use it with students and scenarios.
In Issue 12 of The Galactic Times Newsletter:
Cover Photo — Star Death in the Butterflies
This Just In —The Rosetta Stone of Supernovae;
A Proposed Scale to Evaluate the Communication of Finding ETs;
An Example of the Above, TodaySky Planning Calendar — Moon-Gazing - Mercury and the Moon, and Mars; Observing—Plan-et; Border Crossings; For the Future - Upcoming Eclipse, Upcoming Comet
Astronomy in Everyday Life — GoFundMe. Please?
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The Black Friday/End of Year/Holidays with Increased Discount Sale.
Every year, Hermograph Press tries to clear its inventory shelves with an End of Year Etc. sale, in which a discount coupon nets you a discount off the sale. Sort of like Hermograph Roulette. With each issue of The Galactic Times and The Classroom Astronomer, the discount increases, but historically, the inventory goes down on some items so quickly that if you wait too long, there isn’t left on an item you want to buy at a greater discount!
For this initial run, the discount off any item in the Hermograph Store:
25%
Use Code EOY2, good until November 15th, 2021.
==Astronomy and Education Related Items==
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