What’s that in the sky? July 31, 2007
Posted by astroed in Astronomy, Education, ICT.trackback
At the moment there are numerous queries about large, bright lights in the evening sky. Such questions might be considered an occupational hazard when Venus is bright and high in the west but at least they are not as bad as questions as to whether Mars will be as big as the Moon in August!
Where possible and appropriate I take advantage of these inquiries to inform people as to where they can find out what is up in the sky themselves. There are several excellent websites that talk about what is up each month. Ian Musgrave from Astroblog produces a monthly report on his Southern Sky Watch website that is great for Australian observers and is linked from the ABC Science site. No doubt there are many more sites for northern hemisphere viewers.
I like to encourage people to get outside and look up. A star chart or planisphere is always handy for this though many people find them confusing to use at first. Skymaps.com produce excellent skycharts in northern and southern hemisphere editions each month. These are free downloadable PDFs that can be printed off in class sets and contain details on highlights for that month.
Planisphere is a free Windows program that students can use to produce a planisphere tailored for their latitude. They can print it out and construct their own planisphere to use at home or on a school camp.
Perhaps my all time favourite piece of astronomical software is Stellarium, a FREE open-source program.
Stellarium is a free open source planetarium for your computer. It shows a realistic sky in 3D, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope.
It has a lovely aesthetic and is available for Mac OSX, Windows and Linux machines. The latest version (0.90) has recently been released. One of the strengths of Stellarium in an educational setting is the uncluttered interface. It is so simple to use that students can quickly start using it and exploring what if? and when is? scenarios very quickly. The price is right for school systems and it is a must-have for any science classroom or computer. I’ll write more about some educational examples using Stellarium later.
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