Astronomy ClubAn Introduction to the Milky Way
EU 'Hands on Universe' Programme
The Observatoire Haute Provence (OHP) was the setting for an excellent Continuing Professional Development (CPD) Teacher Training workshop from 7 – 10 May 2009, under the sponsorship of the EU ‘Hands on Universe’ programme (HOU). Teachers had two full-on days of working through various activities that would be immediately accessible by pupils.
One of my ideal ‘outcomes’ for any teacher training event is the provision of real strategies that are useful for delivering the curriculum without much ‘tweaking’. The HOU workshop provided many such opportunities, for example, the use of the SalsaJ programme to ‘stack’ and ‘animate’ sequential solar images provides a great animation that any KS3 student can perform.
The task can help pupils to develop skills in ICT, managing information and analysing data. From this, pupils can progress at their own pace/level of interest to determine the rotation period of the Sun or the actual size of prominences or flares. This leads on to the understanding of relative sizes of objects in the Solar System, when pupils can find out how many ‘Earths’ could tuck underneath a solar prominence!
My favourite activity was one lead by Dr Sarah Roberts from the Faulkes Telescope team, who guided teachers through the Faulkes resources for learning about ‘The Life Cycle of Stars’ and the Herztsprung-Russell (HR) -diagram, before setting us loose on a wonderfully interactive lesson to produce HR graphs from star clusters (both open and globular clusters) by analysing FITS data. Girls from the Astronomy Club have already produced their own FITS files from Faulkes telescope images. Pupils could then compare the diagrams obtained from the different types of star cluster to make a conclusion about the types of stars present in each.
I am definitely a beginner in the use of SalsaJ computer software (being a mere Biologist) but I had a great sense of achievement after completing this activity. If I can do it, my pupils will have no problem! I plan to use this activity to allow my students to progress in their knowledge of star life cycles. Ideally they would process their own Faulkes data, but initially I will trial the activity using the FITS files already present on the website.
A highlight of the course at OHP was getting to see the 193cm telescope where Mayor and Queloz discovered the first exoplanet in 1995. Naturally I had to get my photo taken in front of the dome. The telescope and I have one thing in common - we both saw ‘first light’ in 1958!
My thanks go to the Faulkes telescope staff from Cardiff University and the EU-HOU co-ordinators for the invitation to represent the UK at this CPD event.
J Milligan
Other Astronomy Club items:
Out of this World! - pupils take control of Faulkes Telescope, Hawaii
Royal Astronomical Society National Astronomy Meeting, QUB, 1 – 4 April 2008
