ASP Symposium: Weekend Workshops – Day One June 2, 2008
Posted by astroed in Astronomy, Education.trackback
I arrived in St Louis on Friday night after a long flight from Australia sans luggage. Oh well! Fortunately Jim Small from the St Louis Astronomical Society helped me out by taking we down to a couple of Jazz/Blues bars near the BUSCH Stadium where the local Cardinals were playing Pittsburgh (baseball). Had a nice Cajun meal, a few restorative beers and managed to buy a t-shirt from BBs so I was respectable for the following day’s workshop. Just got back to the hotel before a massive thunderstorm struck. Lots of others didn’t quite make it so there were many drenched people arriving in the hotel lobby. Thunder and sleep don’t mix hen combined with jet lag so only got a few hours sleep.
Saturday saw day one of the weekend workshops organised by the ASP. Three were on offer and I had selected Amateur Astronomers as Champions of IYA 2009. This turned out to be a sound choice as the workshop had a range of presenters and topics and gave overview of some IYA activities an how amateurs can get involved. I’ll try and summarise the sessions below.
- The workshop was introduced and hosted by Marni Berendsen and Vivian White from the Astronomical Society of the Pacific.
- First topic was by Sun-Earth Day Opportunities by Lou Mayo and Isabel Hawkins.
- Marin and Vivian then gave an overview of of the IYA Program for Amateur Astronomers.
- Stephen Pompea and Rob Spark from NOAO presented Teaching with the Galileoscope in the IYA. This was a really useful session and I was impressed how the team working on the Galileoscope have reined the concept and have what appears to be a workable, flexible and engaging solution. he plan now is for a scope with about 45x magnification, 1 degree field of view and a large eye relief. This will give a telescope that is suitable for urban students to view the Moon and the planets. The telescope can also double a an optical lab and is reusable so different groups can construct their own telescope. The aim is a scope for about $10 per unit.
- Following lunch Vivian showed us how to make a comet from dry ice and some other ingredients. This is always a fun activity. An engaging addition was getting each group to design and decorate their own Comet Cook aprons.
- Brian Day introduced us to LCROSS, (Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite) a lunar mission that will send a Centaur rocket stage crashing into a polar crater on the Moon. The collision and resulting cloud of ejecta will be monitored by the LCROSS probe following 4 minutes behind. They hope to find evidence of water in the cloud. One point that grabbed my attention was the that high school students in the GAVRT scheme using the 32m dish at Goldstone will be monitoring the LCROSS trajectory from the Earth to the Moon. Depending on the launch date (currently projected as late December 08) this could take a few months. Brian and I chatted about the possibility of some Australian students involved in PULSE@Parkes also getting involved and observing the probe. Marni then consolidated this by presenting some cratering activities and simulations including the bowl of flour dusted with cocoa powder and some useful hints as how to maximise the impact (pardon the pun) of these.
- Dark Skies from the Ground up: Amateur Astronomers as Ambassadors for GLOBE at Night covered by Connie Walker from NOAO and Dark Skies Discovery Sites by Terry Mann from the Astronomical League. GLOBE at Night is a wonderful project set up by Connie and her team. It runs during March each year and involves anyone going outside at night, finding Orion the trying to compare what they see with one of six diagrams available from the website. There is an excellent range of online and support materials. What I particularly like is that it is designed for use anywhere and caters for southern hemisphere observers
After a long but stimulating day I returned to the hotel to find that my luggage had finally arrived intact! I didn’t have much time to relax though as I was soon heading off with a group about 30 km out of St Louis for a great party at Pamela Gay of StarStryder and Astronomy Cast fame’s home. This was a wonderful way to end the day and meet lots of people. I finally met Phil Plait (of Bad Astronomy) and Chris Lintott having been a regular reader of all their blogs. Phil in his former employment had worked on the GLAST Outreach materials whilst Chris is one of the team heading up Galaxy Zoo. I’ll be attending their workshop on new media in astronomy on day two. Another heavy thunderstorm enlivened the evening but was mixed with some fine food, beer and conversation.
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Interesting report – will the presentations of this session be made available in any way? I’m with the IYA Nat’l Committee in Germany AND an amateur astronomer, eagerly ingesting all input …
[...] Original post by astroed [...]
Hi Daniel
The ASP will be publishing a conference proceedings that will include all of these and the outrach/education/IYA sessions held over the next four days at the ASP/AAS meeting. They will trying to publish as soon as possible. I’ll see what will be available online soon. The IYA website should have some new material up tomorrow.
Daniel
A lot of material from today’s New Media section will be going up on:
http://www.astronomycast.com/LIVE/
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