Published: August 27, 2009 07:51 pm      

FSU’s Starlab to visit schools

The author of this column will be visiting Allegany County schools starting this coming Friday.

I’ll be using either the venerable Starlab Planetarium in the public schools and the university’s own portable planetarium at religious schools. The Starlab has been used every year since 1981; it is easy to set up and use in schools.

The university’s projector is used with a larger dome that is much difficult to inflate and deflate. So both systems have their advantages and drawbacks.

Either way, Friday is my favorite day of the week for teaching. I start with the early class period at a school and typically see 150 students and their teachers in sessions all through the school day. I love to answer questions from the students.

Elementary students aren’t inhibited about asking and it’s great to see their curiosity about space topics. Sometimes I mention that a student in one of my sessions might someday travel to the moon or even be the first human to walk on Mars.

Of course, the most important skills to develop in school (to make these opportunities possible) are reading and math. Reading is the key to most subjects. Mathematics tell us how much and when to do something whether it’s firing a rocket engine or building a bridge. Of course, numbers are essential to describing the universe.

Long ago, humans had no clue on how big or how far away the sun was. Finding a good value for the sun’s distance relied in the 1700s on timing the transits of Venus, the passage of our nearest neighbor planet in front of the sun’s disk. We had such an event that was visible locally in June of 2004. The next Venus transit will be in 2012.

Some schools have too many obligations to allow me to do planetarium sessions with their classes. So I have decided to develop Power Point presentations on the sky that can be accessed by anyone with a computer with internet service, whether a teacher, a student or any interested sky gazer.

There are a number of very fine planetarium programs that show a realistic night sky on your computer screen, some of which can be downloaded for free (such as Stellarium or Celestia). But I wanted to do a complete seasonal sky presentation, where basic terms are introduced and the main stars and groups are shown very simply at that time of year.

I also included three sets of multiple choice questions (three each set) to see if the viewer could apply the concepts. (Of course for each set, the correct answers would be shown.) No one will get a grade or fail; the question sets are for you to use as you see fit.

I decided to offer two presentations, one for beginners (primary grades) and one for intermediates (middle school grades). These presentations each have about 25 screens that are advanced by pressing the enter (or return) sky. Within most screens are bulleted statements that are unveiled as you press the enter key.

So you can go through the presentations at your own speed. I invite anyone who has additional questions about the basics to send an email to rdoyle@frostburg.edu. These presentations are free for anyone to use, download or copy.

I will issue five versions in a school year which would cover the months of September through November, November through January, January through March, March through May and May through August.

So in all of the school and summer months, there will be a presentation that matches the current sky (both evening and morning). To avoid confusion, only one version will be shown at a time.

To see these presentations, go to http://www.frostburg.edu/planetarium or visit the FSU Web site at http://www.frostburg.edu and do a search for Planetarium. Look at the lower right of the first Planetarium page and click on the Power Point presentations.

The first screen of each presentation will remind you that anyone can use these presentations and if you find any needed changes, email me about them. The second screen is the title screen, letting you know that a new version will be available in early November. The third screen gives you a list of the key topics presented as well as the moon, planet and star tables.

A listing of our Fall 2009 Public Planetarium programs are one of the last screens. Our Planetarium phone numbers (one to leave requests by voice mail and the other to hear road directions to the Planetarium) are also listed.

As last year, I am willing to go to a school without Starlab if I can talk to at least two classes (can be at the same time, as I did at Parkside Elementary last fall.) Naturally, if you would like to talk to me face to face, see me after one of our Sunday programs that will start next Sunday at 4 p.m. and 7 p.m.

I really enjoy having student visitors from any elementary, middle schools, high schools or any colleges at these free Sunday presentations (last about 45 minutes). Of course, home schoolers or any one from the Tri-State area are also welcome. There are no age limits; infants have been known to sleep through planetarium programs (not that my live presentations put everyone to sleep!).

Tonight the moon is low in the southern evening sky, in front of the stars of Sagittarius. On Tuesday, the moon will appear near the very bright planet Jupiter. The moon will be full this coming Friday. Next weekend, we will have extra early evening moonlight (a preview of October’s Harvest Moon on Oct. 3).

Bob Doyle invites comments or questions from readers; send them to the above email address.