Educational resources in astronomy
Become a space researcher by studying a very familiar object in the sky! Our Moon orbits the Earth and always looks different: its shape and position vary at different times over the month.
Keywords: Moon, Moon phases
This activity follows on from Locating Objects on a Planisphere.
In this activity, you will continue to familiarise yourself with a planisphere and discover the impact of the motion of the Earth on where stars appear in the sky.
Keywords: planisphere, observing the sky, sidereal time, co-ordinates
The positions of stars are found using their celestial co-ordinates just as objects on Earth can be located by latitude and longitude.
Depending on where you stand on Earth, what you see in the sky will vary. Using a planisphere allows us to work out what is above us and where it has been or will be.
This activity will help you understand how a planisphere works. You will learn to locate constellations and stars on a planisphere, and to assign celestial co-ordinates to stars. The activity also explores the visibility of objects in the sky throughout the year.
Before beginning the activity, you may wish to look at the ‘Calibrating the Planisphere’ activity first and also be aware of which latitude planisphere you are using:
Keywords: planisphere, observing the sky, mapping, co-ordinates
In this activity, we will demonstrate and model the solar system motions with our selves as objects. In this activity, we will try to find what is the directions of motion and rotation of the the moon and inner planets. How can we “shift” our perspective of the solar system between a stationary observer and an observer standing on a rotating Earth?
Asteroids are small objects that zoom around the Solar System. See if you can find the asteroid in the photos in this assignment! Pluto was discovered using this same method.
Keywords: asteroid, photos, blinking
Why is the Sun green in a photo taken with a UV camera? We can’t actually see UV light, so the colour of the photo was just chosen to be green!
In this assignment, you can choose any colour scale for an image of space taken to capture a specific wavelength of light. This activity is about making space images more interesting to look at! Which colours make the image look the most interesting?
Keywords: colour, light, wavelength
Stellarium is a tool where you can study the skies just like the astronomers. You can repeat the observations of Jupiters moons done by Galileo Galilei four hundred years ago, or you find stunning real-life pictures of your favourite deep sky object.
We have collected some simple instructions to get you started with Stellarium. Download these files, and start learning and having fun!
Here are some introductory material and resources needed if you wish to use the Faulkes Telescope Project / Las Cumbres Observatory network.
This set of resources will guide you through the skills required to use Faulkes Telescope.
This activity will teach you how to perform photometry using the free image processing software, AstroImageJ.
AstroImageJ is an image processing software which is used to analyse FITS file images. These are the files that are produced by the Faulkes Telescope that you will be using in your investigation.
If you do not already have it on your computer, you can download it from the link below:
http://www.astro.louisville.edu/software/astroimagej/installation_packages/
This worksheet describes how to use your photometry measurements to investigate the changing brightness of your target.
This worksheet describes how to add error bars to your light curves to investigate how much you can trust the trends you might see. When you have plotted simple graphs, you will present your results on graphs to display the error bars.
This worksheet describes how to use your photometry measurements to investigate the changing brightness of your target.
This worksheet describes how to add error bars to your photometry graphs to investigate how much you can trust the trends you might see. When you have plotted simple graphs, you will present your results on graphs to display the error bars.
This worksheet describes how to add error bars to your colour graphs to investigate how much you can trust the trends you might see.
This lesson begins with a presentation on Constellations. Students are introduced to the Northern sky and discus topics such as: What is a constellation? What are the names of some constellations? Why are some stars brighter than others? and How do we label stars?
The activity of this lesson involves students choosing a constellation and using metal food foil and a mobile phone (or other torch) to project it onto the ceiling of the classroom.
Age Range: 7-9 years
Prep. Time: 20 mins
Lesson Time: 20 mins
Cost per activity: Printing of student’s worksheets
Includes the use of: Northern star map, mobile phone or torch, white sheet of paper, shirt button, 20 x 20 cm food foil, laptop.
In astrophotography, colours are treated in different ways – telescopes generally do not take colour pictures, but use special filters to capture light in particular parts of the optical spectrum (e.g. red light only). This interactive app from the Faulkes Telescope project will show you how colour images are made using different filters, combining them to make various types of “colour image”.