Category Archives: astronomy education

astronomy education

High-school Faculty Track Spacecraft Breakup

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Wow!

I gotta say: this is a great time to be a student and a high-school teacher, especially in Brookline, Massachusetts! When NASA wants to study meteor showers or other debris (like breaking-apart spacecraft) as they burst though our atmosphere, they call on a group of high-school students and their talented science teachers in Brookline. These are the folks at the Clay Center Observatory at Dexter and Southfield Schools. Even better, sometimes faculty members that guide the Clay Center students get to go out and track spacecraft with NASA folks in a high-flying aircraft.

Jules Verne Re-entry into Earths Atmosphere (Courtesy European Space Agency)
Jules Verne Re-entry into Earth's Atmosphere (Courtesy European Space Agency)

The airborne expedition went to watch the Jules Verne passengerless craft that had been docked to the International Space Station reenter Earth’s atmosphere.  To prepare for the study trip, NASA scientist Peter Jenniskens put together a group of 30 researchers at the space agency’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. After days of checks, calibrations, and test runs, the team, including Clay Center faculty members Ron Dantowitz and Marek Kozubal, along with undergraduate student David Sliski, climbed aboard two chase-plane aircraft to watch from high over the South Pacific during September 29th’s predawn encounter.

One one plane, Dantowitz and Kozubal operated a bank of eight sensitive cameras and spectrographs, built at the school, to record the temperature and composition of superheated fragments created during the spacecraft’s blazing atmospheric plunge. Meanwhile, Sliski operated an additional camera and spectrograph on a second aircraft, a DC-8 that NASA has converted into an airborne laboratory.

Once back in Massachusetts, Dantowitz and Kozubal will need many months to analyze their data. “The work of the Clay Center is often exciting, but the impact of this mission makes it truly extraordinary and very rewarding,” Dantowitz notes, adding that Dexter-Southfield students will be able to use the instruments and the accumulated data for research projects to enhance their science education.

Operated by Dexter and Southfield Schools, the Clay Center for Science and Technology is a state-of-the-art astronomical observatory and learning center. By day, the observatory provides students with opportunities to enrich their education through hands-on experiences in astronomy and science. At night, its professional-grade telescopes are used for scientific research and serve as a valuable resource for astronomers around the world.

astronomy, astronomy education, Astronomy outreach

Where Does Outer Space Start?

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And other Interesting Questions

Back when I worked at the planetarium at CU, I used to do a lot of lectures for school kids. I’d always invite questions at the end of the session, and some of them were really quite good. For instance, after a talk about stargazing and the planets, I had one kid ask, “Where does outer space start?”

Instead of trying to answer right away, I asked the student, “Where do YOU think it starts?”  The whole class got in on it, and eventually we came up with an answer that it probably starts just above our planet’s atmosphere. They figured that out themselves, with a little prompting from me.  And, I could pull up images of Earth on the dome and we could talk about the “top” of the atmosphere by looking at it. Chalk one up for the use of a planetarium in education! (The commonly held definition is that space starts about 100 kilometers (about 60 miles) above our heads.)

Another time, I had a student ask about why we see stars at night but not during the day.  Of course, I did remind him that there IS one star we can see during the day, the Sun. But, he had a good question and once again, I asked him to think about reasons why we don’t see stars during the day.  Eventually we worked it out by going outside and talking about what it was that kept us from seeing the stars during daylight.

One of the most memorable question “events” I had was with a little girl who waited until the very end to ask her question. Just as I was about to end the Q&A period, she timidly raised her hand. I called on her and she asked, “What’s it like inside a black hole?”

Before I could answer, her teacher said, “Don’t ask stupid questions!”  (The same teacher had been silent when the boys in her class who had been giggling and goofing off during the whole lecture had asked me some really stupid questions like “How do you pronounce Uranus?” and acted quite silly when I seriously explained the proper pronunciation).

The little girl sort of wilted in her seat, but I wasn’t going to let her question go unanswered. First I mentioned that in science there’s no such thing as a stupid question, but that as some of the other students had demonstrated, there are silly questions. I explained that a question about black holes and their insides is a very good one that scientists speculate about all the time. By the time I got through with my answer, the little girl was smiling, the teacher was glowering, and the boys had stopped fooling around and began thinking of follow-up questions.

Science starts with questions like “what is this?” and “Why does it do that?”  and “How far away is it?” and “What’s it like on—?”  If you walk outside at night and look up at the stars, I guarantee that you’ll have questions about what you’re seeing. And, that the answers will always amaze you. And if they amaze YOU, think of what they’ll ignite in a child’s mind!