New Zealand Science Teacher

Takeaway telescopes and building enthusiasm for astronomy

15/04/2015

An astronomy pilot programme was so successful it is to be repeated again this year, writes University of Canterbury science outreach coordinator JOAN GLADWYN.

Above: Students represent the sun, the Earth and constellations near the ecliptic as a way to understand why the constellations visible in the night sky change as the year progresses.

Allowing students to take telescopes home and share their new astronomy knowledge was part of a Star Quest 2014 pilot programme at the University of Canterbury. It was so successful the programme is being run again in 2015.

We wanted to enthuse students about astronomy and science. We felt to allow the students to communicate their new knowledge to whānau and friends at school they had to be able to take their telescope home with them.

The workshop was held in May 2014, close to Matariki. The telescopes provided were Galileoscopes. They were originally produced for the 2009 International Year of Astronomy but have proved so popular they are still being produced in the thousands. The original concept was to produce a telescope of the same quality as Galileo might have used for his astronomical discoveries. Though the casing is made of plastic, the objective and eyepiece lenses are glass doublets of high quality, and actually much better than Galileo would have had.

The Saturday workshop idea had its beginning in the lead up to a 2013 event. Engaged to help with activities during the Aoraki Mackenzie Starlight Festival, myself and University of Canterbury astronomers Dr Loretta Dunne and associate professor Steve Maddox realised a weekend in Tekapo was financially out of reach for many school students in Canterbury. We applied successfully for funding from the Brian Mason Scientific and Technical Trust to run a Saturday astronomy workshop for year 10 students in decile 1-6 schools.

It was great we could buy the telescopes alongside the ones for Tekapo. We got a good discount on them, and on the shipping charges, which meant we could use most of the funding to buy tripods for each student to use. We also paid postgraduate students to help, allowing the school students to get maximum benefit from the workshop.

We were quite concerned that the telescopes might get broken or dirty without a case so we bought map tubes for each student and they made great cases in which to transport the telescopes.

Twenty-four year 10 students were invited to take part in the workshop, which involved a range of activities beginning with the process of image formation by a lens and a telescope. After that, the students made their own Galileoscope under instruction.

It’s impossible to hold a long telescope steady enough for observations, so learning to use a tripod came next. Students also learned how to find an object in the field of view and how to estimate the magnification. We had a riddle on the whiteboard and students found the answer by reading the sheet of paper we’d pasted upside-down on a distant garage door.

With the date of the workshop close to Matariki, we were privileged to have Dr Pauline Harris from the Society of Māori Astronomy Research and Traditions at Victoria University of Wellington with us for the day.

Dr Harris spoke about the history of Māori astronomy and introduced some of the Māori names for stars and constellations. This led into an activity where the students made their own planispheres (maps of the sky), which can be set to the current day in the year.

Associate professor Steve Maddox ran an activity where students learned why the constellations change their positions in the sky. Individual students represented each of the constellations (the signs of the zodiac) along the ecliptic, the path the sun appears to take through the sky as a result of the earth’s orbit around it. Other students represented constellations above and below the path.

Left: Students represent named stars with known luminosity and peak wavelength (related to brightness and colour), arranged on a room-sized Hertzsprung-Russell diagram. The majority of stars are found along a diagonal line named the Main Sequence. “Stars” move across the room as they evolve from the Main Sequence into red giants, white dwarfs and other states.

 

 

 

Dr Loretta Dunne also used students being stars to teach the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram. This chart is at the core of astronomy teaching. The chart shows the distribution of known stars according to their luminosity and peak wavelength. “We find that most stars are on the ‘main sequence’ – a diagonal line across the chart – with hot white dwarfs in one corner and cool red giants in the opposite corner,” Loretta explains. “We named each student a particular star, for example Betelgeuse, and used the classroom walls as the axes of the diagram. The students arranged themselves on the ‘chart’.” With students physically involved in the chart “it was immediately obvious the stars were arranged in a distinct pattern according to their luminosities and colours”.

University of Canterbury astronomy students played an important role in the workshop too.  Ryan Ridden-Harper and Toby Hendy, two ‘urban astronomers’, instructed the students in how to use solar telescopes and what information could be found about our sun and other stars. Urban astronomers explore the many astronomical sights that can be seen, even when living in urban locations with high light pollution.

Other students mentored small groups throughout the workshop and took part in the ‘Meet an Astronomer’ sessions at the end of the day. These sessions allowed small groups of students to meet and question five astronomers in a ‘speed-dating’ scenario.

Apart from making a telescope, the students told us this was the session they enjoyed the most. They liked getting their own questions answered by experts.

A Star Party organised for two weeks after the workshop was to be a chance for the students to show off their knowledge and skills. Unfortunately this event was cancelled owing to poor weather—a recurring problem in public astronomy.

For 2015 this problem will be avoided by having a short observation session at dusk, timed to coincide with students being picked up after the workshop. It’s fantastic that the students were keen to apply to come to the workshop. They all went away buzzing with enthusiasm about stars, galaxies, black holes and the sun.