A short time ago I asked for advice in regard to teaching a middle school age class about satellite observing. I just finished it and can say that as far as I can tell it was a BIG success. One parent said their child was exposed to "a lot of new information." I found the most effective tool for getting them excited about observing was to use Heavens-Above and good applets. The middle June scheduling could not have been better timed for seeing the ISS going over repeatedly. On the first night I got a really nice video of it slowly dropping below the local horizon, a field some 200 feet away. I used my Sony digital camera set on color slow shutter which captures light down to about 6th magnitude. I rewarded the kids when they saw a satellite the night before. Tootsie rolls always go a long way. Two students saw another satellite while watching for the ISS. From their description we were able to ID it and get the range and altitude and everything else you could ever want to know about a Cosmos rocket. I think they were impressed. To ID it I used TheSky, a planetarium program, and a power point projector. As they watched what was moving through the sky, at the right time one of them exclaimed, "That's it!" We then went to H-A to verify its magnitude to make sure. I learned that one does not want to show this applet: http://timeline.aps.org/APS/resources/satellites.html too soon in the course because every time you turn your back they are playing with it! LOL Instead of taking their break many would come in early and try to get a satellite to orbit the earth and the moon. They also loved the J-Track 3D applet at: http://science.nasa.gov/Realtime/jtrack/3d/JTrack3D.html. Using J-Track I asked them look for a satellite with a highly eccentric orbit. Then they were challenged to get one satellite, using the 'Earth to Moon Experiment' applet, to orbit in a stable, relatively high eccentric orbit. The person that accomplished the best one of those was a parent that stopped by! The Mac computers didn't display the animated graphic at this website http://www.n2yo.com/?s=25544 but I was able to project it for them so they could see things like, where SUITSAT was at that moment. Each participant was called upon to find the height of the perigee and the apogee of "their" satellite. From those values they calculated the distance it would be from a 6 inch Styrene ball. We demonstrated that information by using two colored pins each (some of which had to be on sticks) stuck into the ball. Remarkably, we discovered that AMSAT OSCAR 40 (AO-40, USSPACECOM Catalog No: 26609) has an incredible eccentricity of 0.8! That one required a long stick for sure! Its orbit is illustrated here: http://www.heavens-above.com/orbitdisplay.asp?lat=42.493&lng=-92.343&alt=259&loc=Waterloo&TZ=CST&satid=26609 To put things into perspective we did these exercises that I came up with. First using sidewalk chalk, string, and a measuring tape we marked out the size of the Hubble mirror and the spacecraft on the parking lot. They were impressed! [Next year I'm going to have them trace the outline of a full sized shuttle.] We measured out the length of the "wingspan" of the ISS solar panels. They turned out to be exactly the width of the parking lot! Lastly I took a tiny printed image of the ISS and placed it the distance that would make it appear the same size as we would see it if it were straight overhead. We observed that through a telescope and binoculars. For years I've wanted to see what that would look like!! With handheld 7X binocs, I could only vaguely see a shape. The last thing I did for them was hand out anaglyph (Spy Kids 3D) glasses (for them to keep) and told them to Google "the best of mars" 3D. That led them here: http://www.marsunearthed.com/Anaglyphs/BestOf_AnaglyphIndex_files/Best_of.htm. While looking at the surreal images they whooped and hollered till class was over. Thanks for the help! If I do it again I will be a lot better prepared! Tom Iowa USA ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Jun 25 2006 - 01:00:50 EDT