Showing the kids at school

[Darryls (Darryl)]

I have been asked to bring my telescopes to a local school and let the kids look through them. But this will be during the daylight hours! So I thought about using a white light filter to let them see sun spots, and maybe another scope pointed at the moon. Their teacher also asked me to "tell them about it." Any ideas? TIA
Darryl

[mental4astro (Alexander)]

Hi Darryl,

to IIS!

You've got some good ideas about the Sun and Moon. Yes, I do need to mention the bleeding obvious about cautioning the kids about looking directly at the sun, and NEVER through a telescope or binos that are not set up for this.

What age group are we talking about?

There are a few other things you can do too. One is to have the kids make a pin-hole projector for viewing the sun. I've used this to great effect during the last partial solar eclipse. The kids were amazed that this was so easily achievable. Have them make several holes in their card, different sizes, so they can see what different hole diameters do for the projected image. Even make patterns with the holes for the little kids.

The Moon is always a challenge to view during the day. You can ask the kids why this would be so. Why the Moon is illuminated the shape that it is the day of the viewing and how its orbit around the Earth dictates what we see as illuminated. You may even like to pose the question of why the same face is always facing Earth - tidal lock is a tricky concept to get one's head around, and makes for a real brain tease to see that it is indpendent of its illumination.

If you can, beg borrow or steal a dedicated solar scope. It could be a real stretch to get one, but, the image is well worth the bribe to a mate,

If the kids have smart phones handy, they may want to photograph both Moon and Sun through the eyepiece. Some kids have a real knack for positioning the camera lens over the eyepiece.

With the Moon, you can ask the question of why there are different shaded areas. What could have caused the 'seas' and 'oceans' on the Moon - lava flows from a very ancient and distant past when the Moon was young and hot and it had a thin crust (like the Earth) and lava readily flowed when a big rock hit it and punched through the crust.

Have some information handy to explain sunspots and their relationship to solar activity, and how even the smallest sunspot is larger than the diameter of Earth. What powers the Sun, and how long is its lifespan, and how it will end. Other stats are helpful to give scale to the sun and solar system:

* Sun's diameter roughly the same as the distance from Earth to the Moon.
* Speed of light is roughly the span of the sun's diameter in one second.
* Time light takes to reach Earth from the sun is 9min (if I'm not mistaken... , should reacquaint myself with this...)
* Time to other planets is... well, you get what I mean.

If the kids are older, you may like to ask, mention, the relationship between the Aurora and the sun, and what magnetism has to do with it all.

These are just some suggestions. Plenty to say, and a few things to do.

Good luck with the viewing,

Alex.

[mental4astro (Alexander)]

Thought of a few more things for older age groups, even high school:

* Gravitational lensing, and how the sun is massive enough to produce and prove this (this was verified by a French astronomer a year or two after Einstein first proposed this)
* Lunar impacts and the reasons for ray craters.
* The reason for the seasons
* Reflectors left on the Moon by Apollo astronauts still being used by astronomers.

Sure, more discussion topics than practical, but gets them thinking about the natural world and how astronomy is not 'rocket science', but mostly just applications of everyday things.


Amateur astronomers and their contribution to real science:

This is something that is little understood, or even contemplated by some amateurs! But, there are a few dedicated souls that make serious contributions to astronomy:

* Occultation chasers: These folks chase down predicted occultations of stars by asteroids and other planetoids. The number of people doing this can range from just one person to dozens. They all simultaneously video this event through their telescopes and submit the information to a central professional observatory in Japan which analysis the data to create a profile of the asteroid which in turn helps determine to greater accuracy the mass of the asteroid and subsequent orbit data corrections that need to be made. This goes a long way to determining if a newly discovered asteroid poses a risk to Earth.

One such group is this one:

http://shadowchaser.com.au/category/...-occultations/

The link below is to the international organisation dealing with occultations. Their home page has a diagram of the profile of asteroids determined by occulatation chasers, and how effective their work can be:

http://occultations.org/

* Supernova monitors: These folks take hundreds of photos of the sky looking for supernovae in distant galaxies. As Supernovae explosions are known to be of very specific types (determined by spectral analysis), and reach very specific magnitudes, the distance of the parent galaxy can be determined with great accuracy.

There are a few collectives in both the Northern Hemisphere and the Southern that work collaboratively to this end.

* Another group is dedicated to finding comets and other minor planets in the solar system. Very dedicated bunch this lot.

* A fourth group follow the major planets, looking for anomalies in their atmospheres and surfaces. The Cassini project around Saturn is one such professional mission that uses amateurs here on Earth to verify certain observations, and vice-versa.


All of the above is possible just because of the sheer number of amateurs looking at the sky far outstripping the number of professionals. Amateur astronomers all making a real contribution to real science.

Alex.

[rustigsmed (Russell)]

yes pointing a scope rings alarm bells with kiddies picking binoculars looking at the sun after seeing it done at school.

you could also try and find Saturn if you can somehow align during the day (solar noon).

[gaa_ian (Ian)]

I reckon I have shown a few thousand kids through scopes in the daytime at school with a white light solar filter, including both transits of Venus. For 99% of kids just seeing the sun, grasping its diameter relative to earth, seeing a sunspot and knowing what it is, will make a big impact.
Make sure you have good teacher support and give a short group warning on sun safety. (I always tape my filter on too)
If you can get the moon in, even better.
I would suggest only have 2 scopes if you have another person manning that one too ! Kids can do daft things, like trying to point the 2nd moon scope at the sun !

[Darryls (Darryl)]

Thank-you everyone for your replies and ideas! These kids are 9 years old. I will be both firm and graphic in my warnings about looking at the sun! I do have tracking mounts, and there will be at least three adults involved.

[Allan_L (Allan)]

Something else I think is impressive is that graphic which shows the relative size of the planets to the Sun. Then its relative size to other stars.

This is one link that shows it:
http://didyouknow.org/the-size-of-th...in-comparison/

[zenith (Tim)]

Hi Darryl,
How about adding a web-cam and laptop to your solar viewing and showing them sunspots live on a screen. No harm to little eyes, and many kids can look at the same time. If you choose your day carefully you can have the moon up as well. You could probably have an astro-quiz with prizes.
Best of luck.

[Huey (Michael)]

Hi Daryl,
I may have missed it, but what about the age old method of projecting the sun onto a screen through the telescope? It has the advantage that the whole class can see it, and even take pictures. You could also measure the movement of the "sun" and thus calculate the speed of the Earth's rotation. This will get your numeracy component into the lesson.

Huey

[Darryls (Darryl)]

Thanks to everybody. The "show & tell" went well. It was supposed to be one class of about 25 9 year old kids, but the other two classes piggy-backed on the demonstration, so there were about 75 kids total! The teachers have done a good job with the kids teaching them about the sun/moon/planets in the previous two weeks, so they basically just wanted to give the kids a chance to look through a telescope. I set up two, and each kid got about 30 seconds at the eyepiece on each. Most kids could see the sunspots in one and moon in the other quite well, although some (about 7 of 75) never could get a good look. Some (about 15) immediately said "wow, cool!" At one point, the sun was interfered with by the very top of a pine tree - could have done better planning there I guess. I just did my best to point the mounts north, and then accepted the two-star alignment without any adjustment. Both tracked well enough that I only adjusted them twice during the whole 45 minute session. Each class of about 25 kids was lectured to for about three minutes about the dangers of looking at the sun. "How long can you look at the sun without going blind?" "These telescopes magnify the sun 40x, so now how long?" I think they got the message that they would be instantly blinded if the look at the sun through a telescope. Amazingly, in one class, a little girl raised her hand and said "unless you have an appropriate filter." Smart kid!

[mental4astro (Alexander)]

Hi Darryl,

Mate, I'm very glad to read that the scope session went really well for you,

It is always the case that some kids/people will struggle to figure out how to look into an eyepiece, be it telescope or microscope, or a camera . Please excuse me for not remembering to mention this earlier,

For me it has been a thing of trial and error to find a way that works well. I've done outreach sessions many, many times over many years. In the end, what I find works for me is when a novice comes to the eyepiece for the first time, I get close to them and quietly speak to them about 'now look into the glass window' pointing to the glass of the eyepiece. Somehow this seems to work for 99% of people. They seem to figure out that there is some depth to the glass and that they need to adjust their head to get to look through the 'window'.

To dictate 'now look here!' doesn't seem to help. Only causes anxiety and rush, and a lot of people will just say 'oh, yeah, yeah! I see it!'. Yet when you take your time to quietly talk to them, they remain calm and really respond.

Eyepiece selection is also important. Eyepieces with tricky eye positioning or exceptionally long eye relief are not a good choice. And don't use your top shelf eyepieces either. I have a few EPs just for outreach sessions. They are easy for novices to use, and I don't mind getting finger prints or makeup on them.

Yeah, all of the above is great to say AFTER your session, Sorry about that. Got carried away with responding to your question instead of looking at the broader picture of kids and scopes. But I think this might have been a blessing in disguise as I'm sure you would have had enough to contend with... Next time you'll have more experience and be even better prepared...

Alex.

[astro_nutt]

Hi Darryl.
I've been reading with interest of your observing session with the Sun. I think it's important for the younger ones to understand the dangers and power of our local star. The example you gave will no doubt save a few precious eyes from being damaged when trying to observe the Sun in real time. A nice touch is to have the School print out "Certificate of Solar Observation" and hand them to each student.