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HOU™ Explorations |
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HOU™ Explorations |
Apogee-Perigee ~ SS Cyg ~ Jupiter Week ~ Sky Projects ~ Messier Gallery ~ Asteroids, Comets ~ Moon ~ Constellations ~ Star Finders ~ Planets ~ Asteroids and Comets Orbit ~ Multiple Stars ~ Star Color ~ Star Brightness ~ Star Birth ~ Ring Nebula ~ Star Clusters ~ Galaxies ~ Radio Astronomy ~ Tool Box ~ Name Tags ~ HOUtips ~ Links ~ All these .fts Images (PC: right click to save.)*
HOU Annual Conference Proceedings 2008
View
Comet 17P/Holmes in the sky using constellation photos with the comet
pictured as your guide. View time-lapse movies of telescope images of the
comet taken with the Yerkes 24 inch telescope.
Distance to Mars by Angular Size.
View the changing apparent size of Mars as it moves towards opposition (August
27, 2003).
Distance to Mars by Parallax: Use parallax to determine
the distance to Mars. This parallax activity is a challenge project for HOU
Classes.
Mars Profiles: Model Mars by
drawing features on a sphere (such as an orange) referring to a set of images. View your model through a
filter card. Mars Animations 2003
Moon Treks Mosaic images of
the Moon from Crater Grimaldi to the Sea of Crises. Learn names of craters
and seas along the way!
Constellations
View these tours of the starry sky and learn the patterns of the constellations. Create your own constellation slides/photos using an SLR
camera, cable release and tripod. Notice subtle detail in star patterns,
and record the changing positions of planets or comets.
Tactile
Moon Phases. This is a resource page for educators who work with
students who are blind or visually impaired. There are samples of moon
phases taken during various moon cycles but numbered by the day in the moon's
cycle. The images are presented in contrast suitable for printing, then
copying onto swellform paper which is then heated in a graphics machine to
create a tactile image. The page is useful for students of normal vision
as well and includes a link to the moon mosaics in .fts format.
Luna, Earth's Moon Study
the features and create composites of the Almost
Full Moon and the Just Past Full
Moon. What phase is the moon on October 10, 2003? Explore craters, valleys, and the Straight Wall in Moon Measures. Open Moon Clips to study how craters such as
Copernicus and Tycho change appearance during lunar phases. Construct a
model and Compare Phases. Explore
images of the Lunar Eclipse of March
1997. Complete the Moon Mosaic
for September 21, 1996 or the Moon's Terminator,
July 16, 1998.
Apogee-Perigee of the Moon. How
much different will the size of the moon appear as the moon moves from apogee to
perigee in its orbit? Compare mosaics of images taken near each extreme to
find out!
Jupiter Week.
HOU students and teachers are watching Jupiter in 2003, just have they have done
for the last three years. You can find image sets for projects involving
flipbooks, tracking and predicting moon positions, and for calculating the mass
of Jupiter!
SS Cygni. Analyze the
changing brightness of this cataclysmic variable star.
Sky Projects is similar to Explorations
featuring investigations of Constellations, the Moon, Planets including Saturn,
Neptune, Uranus, Asteroids, and variety of phenomena occuring in the galaxy M74.
New Domes for University of
Chicago's Yerkes Observatory Telescopes!
SN 2002ap in M74. SN Search Looking for SN in Target
Galaxies.
Messier Gallery
This gallery of Messier images is
meant as a reference set of 'fuzzy' objects not to be confused with comets,
first cataloged by Charles Messier, in the 1800's. All of these
images are taken at the University of Chicago, Yerkes Observatory 24 inch
reflecting telescope in Williams Bay, Wisconsin with our Illinois State Board of
Education's SKYWatch project's Apogee-CCD AP7p. Images are taken by/with/for HOU
or SKYWatch teachers working at the telescope in person or as remote
partners.
Tracking Known Asteroids and Comets!
Download image sets taken over one night and/or multiple nights. Add and
subtract frames to make sequences. Explore images of random patches
of the sky to see if you spot anything.
Star Finders Make a star finder! Download Uncle Al's HOU
Starfinder template.
Planets
Investigate images of planets to study their features, observe rotation or the
motion of the moons. Follow Jupiter's red spot in Jupiter Rotation. Track Jupiter's
Moons in Jupiter's Orbiting Moons,
Io Mystery and on the SKYWatch page. Identify Io,
Europa, Ganymede and Callisto by comparing their brightness counts in Jupiter's Bright Moons.
Use the display tools to Find That Moon.
In Saturn's Rings and Moons
investigate this beautiful planet's rings and many moons. Locate distant Neptune and Uranus
and Pluto amid star fields. Look for
evidence of rotation of Mars. View phases of
Venus.
Asteroids and Comets also orbit
our Sun. Find Asteroids
by adding or subtracting images that were taken 15 minutes apart. Asteroids and
comets appear to change position in comparison to the stars as viewed from our
rotating, revolving Earth. Become a Comet
Astronomer with activities featuring Comet Hale-Bopp.
Binary and Multiple Star
Systems Mizar and Alcor are in the handle of the Big Dipper
and you can see the pair with your eyes. However, Mizar itself is a
telescopic binary star. Another binary star in our HOU collection is
Albireo which is the beak of Cygnus the Swan. Alcyone is a multiple star
system in the Pleiades. Using an image of Castor in Gemini you can
study Right Ascension and Declination.
Star Color
Discover the color of stars by comparing the brightness counts of the same star
in images taken with red, green and blue filters. You will collect data
from images taken of a mystery star and from images taken of the Trapezium stars
in M42. Use star color to detect star temperature.
Star Brightness
Compare the brightness of stars using image processing. Relate star
brightness to star magnitude by comparing brightness counts of the stars
in the Pleiades star cluster. Star Hop to the
Pleiades. Penny
Magnitudes is a hands-on activity designed to help visualize the magnitude
scale.
Star Birth Regions
in the Milky Way. Some nebulae are regions of gas and dust in space where
new stars are born. The dust prevents us from seeing all the stars in the
nebula. The bright stars in these nebulae cause the thin gases to glow
(fluoresce). A favorite astronomy research target is M42, the Orion Nebula.
The Ring Nebula is
an example of a Star Death Region in the Milky Way. Some nebulae are
regions of glowing gases and dust which have been puffed off by dying
stars. By imaging these regions with different color filters we can see
separate views of glowing gases. Explore images of the Blue Snowball, NGC7662.
Star Clusters. Open Star Clusters (Galactic
Clusters) contain hot, young stars. Open clusters originally formed
in the same star birth region and continue to be bound together
gravitationally. Open clusters are found in our galaxy's spiral
arms. Pleiades (M45) and the Double Cluster (NGC884 and NGC869) in Perseus
are two such clusters. Analyze and tally the color of the stars in
NGC884. Globular Clusters, such as M56, are
very old star clusters found in a spherical halo around our Milky Way Galaxy.
Galaxies are
huge islands of stars in space and are seen in shapes called Spirals, Ellipticals and Irregulars. The
stars we see in our sky belong to our own Milky Way Galaxy. We live inside this
galaxy, so it is hard to know what it looks like. However, with telescopes
we can see beyond our Milky Way to other galaxies in our Universe.
Radio Astronomy
The National Radio Astronomy Observatories, like Greenbank, West Virginia,
explore the Universe with radio telescopes that detect radio waves instead of
visible light waves.
Watch our Sun with these links to Solar
Observatories. Download prepared .fts images of the Sun. Follow
instructions on how to download .fts images from Big Bear Solar Observatory.
ToolBox HOU Image Processing Tool Box. This guide
is useful as you explore the images with the HOU image processing
software. HOU Image
Processing Help is a more complete help file. HOU™ Tips for Teachers
Personalize
HOU Name Tags Or, use prepared Pleiades, the Moon, or Clouds blank nametags!
Print Universe Explorer Certificates for
star parties and special events!
*Questions? Email Viv, vhoette@yerkes.uchicago.edu* *Purchase HOU software or materials*
*Top of this Page*
Prepared for HOU™ by Vivian Hoette.
11/30/2007
Links to Many
Partners, Collaborators, and NSF, and Yerkes Observatory
http://astro.uchicago.edu/yerkes/
Hands-On Universe™
http://handsonuniverse.org/ receives major funding from the National Science Foundation, http://www.nsf.gov/.
NASA IDEAS.
HOU™ collaborates with many institutions including the Lawrence Hall of Science http://www.lhs.berkeley.edu/ and TERC http://www.terc.edu/;
Univ. of Chicago's Yerkes
Observatory
Links to: NASA Saturday Academy for Space Science (SASS)
Optical Powers: Telescopes and Imaging funded by NSF Center
for Adaptive Optics,and Near and
Far Sciences for Illinois
.
Hands-On Universe™ Home Page
http://handsonuniverse.org/