What Objects To Focus On For School Astronomy? 377
IceDiver writes "I am a teacher in a small rural school. My Grade 9 students are doing a unit on astronomy this spring. I have access to a 4" telescope, and would like to give my students a chance to use it. We will probably only be able to attempt observations on a couple of nights because of weather and time restrictions. I am as new to telescope use as my students, so I have no idea what objects would look good through a 4" lens. What observations should I attempt to have my students make? In other words, how can I make best use of my limited equipment and time to give my students the best experience possible?"
Options. (Score:5, Insightful)
1. The moon.
2. How about the moon?
3. You might want to consider the moon.
4. Have you given any thought to the moon?
No special filters needed, and it's by *far* the most visually impressive with a small aperture. If you can get appropriate filters, the sun is another good option. Everything else.... you might see phases on some of the larger bodies. And you'll probably be able to see the Jovian moons as points of light. That's about it. Perhaps a faint blur for the Andromeda galaxy if you're in a good location.
But the moon looks awesome even through a small scope.
Re:The Sun (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The Sun (Score:4, Insightful)
Seeing Saturn as something other than a point of light is worth it. Really. Seeing the disk and rings transforms it from being a bright star that moves, into a place.
Re:Options. (Score:3, Insightful)
With a projector (or a proper shield blocking most of the input at the front), you'll be able to see sunspots. If you can get a local university to part with a fabry-perot etalon, you can see prominences.
Of course, you can probably get them to part with a grad student an a 12" refractor to go with it for the same price...
The value of inference (was: Re:The Sun) (Score:4, Insightful)
I think just looking at the stars is not nearly as great as trying to find out how much you can infer from observations.
Astronomy is the probably the science which requires the highest level of skill in inferring information, or trying to get at information in a bit round-about way, as it's kind of difficult to actually modify the universe on a large scale just to test a theory. And in my experience, I'd say inference is a skill not nearly taught enough nowadays - astronomy could be the subject for it.
If you have access to them, the BBC showed a program series called rough science which had a couple of interesting little experiments you could do - like calculating the diameter of a crater on the moon - with the most trivial of things at your disposal, and also trying to come up with a useful margin of error for their own measurements.
In the same program, they then also had a different group trying to measure the diameter of another crater here on earth (which they took the team to), by making the triangulate a point on the other side of the crater (if no crater at hand, you could do a practice session, trying to find the distance from the current position to a landmark nearby -- without allowing the students to actually just walk/drive over and measure the distance, but to gain that information from their own vantage points. (again, also get them to come up with a margin of error).
In both cases, in the end compare the student-found results with actual data...