Overheard: extending telescope tripod legs

Astronomy 210L, fall semester 2012
Cuesta College, San Luis Obispo, CA

(Overheard as students are setting up telescopes on tripods in astronomy lab.)

Instructor: (Noticing students kneeling on the ground, looking through the telescope on a tripod with unextended legs.) "You'll probably be more comfortable if you extend the legs on the tripod."

Student: (Watching as instructor picks up tripod to extend legs.) "I didn't know it could do that--I've never used a tripod before in my life!"

Overhead: Earth awesomeness/lameness?

Astronomy 210L, spring semester 2012
Cuesta College, San Luis Obispo, CA

(Overheard while students set up their research posters for the last astronomy lab meeting.)

Student 1: "I hate Venus--Venus is such a lame planet."

Student 2: (Presenting a project tracking the sidereal motion of Venus.) "Nuh-uh. Venus is cool."

Instructor: "Yeah, Venus is so cool, Earth is so lame."

Student 1: "Are you kidding? Earth is awesome--it has a moon."

Instructor: (Beat.) "Earth only thinks it's awesome...it's like, 'I'm so special, check out my moon,' and the moon is like, 'Why do I hang around with this loser? If I could leave Earth I could be a planet.'"

Overheard: all that glitters

Astronomy 210L, fall semester 2011
Cuesta College, San Luis Obispo, CA

(Overheard while students set up their research posters for the last astronomy lab meeting.)

Student: "Do you like how I did the galaxies [at the top of the poster]?"

Instructor: "Are those [elliptical galaxy and spiral galaxy] just glitter and glue?"

Student: "Yeah. I had some space to fill in so I went with that."

Instructor: "Seriously, when was the last time you got to use glitter and glue?"

Student: (Beat.) "I'll have to get back to you on that."

Overheard: fabulous graph

Astronomy 210L, fall semester 2011
Cuesta College, San Luis Obispo, CA

(Overheard while students set up their research posters for the last astronomy lab meeting.)

Instructor: "Are these data points on your graph...sequins?"

Student: "No, they're just drawn in with purple ink."

Instructor: "That's too bad." (Beat.) "Because if they were sequins, your graph would be...fabulous!"

Backwards-faded scaffolding laboratory/presentation: studying extrasolar planets

Our solar system, to scale. Eight planets, count 'em--four terrestrial ("Earth-like"), close to the sun; four jovian ("Jupiter-like"), much further away from the sun. If you think there should be nine planets, then I'm not sure which solar system you live in...

What about extrasolar planets, orbiting other stars? More and more of them are being discovered all the time--what generalizations can be made about these planets, compared to our solar system, and as a whole? (Video link: "Kepler Orrery (large & small systems).")

(This is the ninth Astronomy 210L laboratory at Cuesta College, San Luis Obispo, CA. This course is a one-semester, optional adjunct laboratory to the Astronomy 210 introductory astronomy lecture, taken primarily by students to satisfy their general education science transfer requirement.)

Let's consider two common methods of discovering extrasolar planets, taking into consideration that these methods do not actually "see" these extrasolar planets directly.

The first method involves observing an extrasolar planet either pass behind or in front of its star as it orbits the star, such that their combined brightness will fluctuate over time. (Video link: "Distant Planet Flaunts its Light.")

The second method involves observing an extrasolar planet pull on its star as it orbits the star, such that the star will be observed to "wobble" over time, much like the ball pulls back on the hammer thrower as they revolve. (Video link: "2010 Asian Games - Men's Hammer Throw Final.")

For this lab you will be accessing an enormous amount of data on these extrasolar planets, in order to find patterns and correlations.

One way to organize data is with a histogram, or "bar chart," where each type of category is tallied up, and their numbers are shown as different heights.

Another way to organize data is with a scatter plot, or "correlation diagram," where one characteristic is plotted versus another characteristic along horizontal and vertical axes.

So taking all the extrasolar planets from the data set, here shown superimposed on the "same" solar system... (Video link: "Kepler Exoplanet Candidates.")

...and plotting two properties versus each other on scatter graph, may show the resulting data points seeming to form a pattern, and thus indicating a correlation...

...or may instead seem randomly spread out, and in this case indicating no correlation between the two properties.

So these two types of graphs, bar charts and scatter plots, are very powerful and elegant ways to organize data and to find interesting results that may suggest underlying causes and effects among extrasolar planet properties.

Your personal experience with these tools may vary.

Backwards faded scaffolding laboratory/presentation: moons & motions

Maybe it's a good thing that Earth only has one moon...

(This is the eighth Astronomy 210L laboratory at Cuesta College, San Luis Obispo, CA. This course is a one-semester, optional adjunct laboratory to the Astronomy 210 introductory astronomy lecture, taken primarily by students to satisfy their general education science transfer requirement.)

Galileo discovered four of Jupiter's moons, and their motion around Jupiter, while it didn't necessarily disprove geocentrism and prove heliocentrism, did manage to resolve an objection to a moving Earth--if the moon revolves around Earth, and Earth did move, then shouldn't it leave the moon behind? Note that the orbits of these moons are seen edge-on, so we see lots of eclipsing here as these moons either pass in front of or behind Jupiter.

So the first type of eclipse is a transit, where a smaller object (in this case, Io) passes in front of a larger object (Jupiter). Because the sun is actually off to the right in this telescope view, Io's shadow on Jupiter is to the left of Io. Remember for a transit, "a small thing travels across a larger thing."

The second type of eclipse is an occultation ("hidden," similar to a "cult"), where a larger object (in this case, the moon) passes in front of a smaller object (Saturn). So for an occultation, "a small object hides behind a larger thing."

Today, instead of using the motion of Jupiter's moons to adjust clocks, which are now much more accurate, the timing of transits and occultations are timed in order to refine information and models of astronomical positions and sizes.

Today you'll investigate not only the motion of the moon and Jupiter's moons on NASA's Solar System Simulator (space.jpl.nasa.gov), but also gather data on the orbital periods, transits, and occultations of other objects as well.

Transit, or occultation?

Transit, or occultation?

Overheard: "galaxy scratchers"

Astronomy 210L, Spring Semester 2011
Cuesta College, San Luis Obispo, CA

110323-1220796
http://www.flickr.com/photos/waiferx/5561971349/
Originally uploaded by the Waifer X

(Overheard while students are being tested on categorizing different galaxy types on the GalaxyZoo project used in a backwards folded scaffolding laboratory activity.)

Instructor: "So how are you doing on the 'scratchers' part of the lab?"

(Beat.)

Student 1: "The what?"

(Beat.)

Student 2: (Laughs.)

Student scribble: "Observing P-Dog"

110304-1220474
http://www.flickr.com/photos/waiferx/5503505281/
Originally uploaded by Waifer X

Student observation logbook, Astronomy 210L, Cuesta College, San Luis Obispo, CA. Photo taken by Cuesta College Physical Sciences Instructor Dr. Patrick M. Len.

Backwards faded scaffolding laboratory/presentation: student research question presentations

110207-1220239/37/36
http://www.flickr.com/photos/waiferx/5428637944/
Originally uploaded by Waifer X

Student group presentations of backwards faded scaffolding (Tim Slater, Stephanie Slater, Daniel J. Lyons, Engaging in Astronomical Inquiry, W.H. Freeman & Company, New York, 2010) research questions on whiteboards. Astronomy 210L laboratory, Cuesta College, San Luis Obispo, CA. Video by Cuesta College Physical Sciences Division instructor Dr. Patrick M. Len.

Overheard: Febtober

Astronomy 210L, Spring Semester 2011
Cuesta College, San Luis Obispo, CA

(Overheard during a backwards faded scaffolding introductory astronomy laboratory on the motions of the sun on January 31, 2011.)

Student 1: "Could you take a look at our computer? It [the Heavens-above.com Astronomy > Whole sky chart webpage] is giving us error messages."

Instructor: "What's going on?"

Student 2: "If we put in today's date, we get the star map to load. [Inputs 01 31 2011; star map loads.] If we put in two months from now, we also get that star map to load. [Inputs 03 31 2011; star map loads.] But when we go back to just one month from now, we get an error message. [Inputs 02 31 2011; error message comes up.]"

Instructor: "There's your problem right there."

(Beat.)

Instructor: "How many days does February have?"

(Beat.)

Student 1: "What?"

(Beat.)

Student 2: "Oh."

Esprit d'escalier:
Instructor (using best Sean Connery voice): "Since next month has 31 days, it must be...Febtober."

Student 2: "Then would Jantember be when this month has only 30 days?"