Personal Technology Projects: Stellarium and Celestia

I Love teaching physics, but astronomy is really my passion. However there are a lot of misconceptions that students have about our universe, and correcting them can be quite a challenge. These tools are wonderful for that.

What did you learn about Stellarium? Stellarium is an earth view based astronomy tool. Its basically a free version of Starry Night Deluxe. The navigation system has a steep learning curve so you would need to teach students how to navigate it. It is very flexible as it provides information about the entire night sky across the entire world, and has the ability to give accurate representations in time forwards or backwards.

What instructional problems could you use this technology for? This could be helpful in determining the cause for the phases of the moon. Many children think that crescent moons and new moons are caused by the shadow of the earth. Using the program you could see views like this:

This shows the moon in the night sky, a

common occurance that the kids should have experienced by now.

This shows a zoomed in view of the full moon

We have gone forward in time and the moon is now in a crescent phase. (hmm... its getting hard to see it because of all the daylight. I wonder why? :) )

Oh well we can just turn of the atmosphere! That gets rid of that pesky daylight problem.

But what is this? a new moon right next to the Sun! Hmm.... So that means it cant be the earth's shadow. So who's shadow is it?

What are 2-3 activities you could use this technology for in your own teaching? This activity meets the 6th grade standard that:

Students will understand that the appearance of the moon changes in a predictable cycle as it orbits Earth and as Earth rotates on its axis.

Another activity could be tracking the motion of the international space station, and predicting when it will fly in our field of view. We could then have a

late night activity to see if we can catch a glimpse of it. This hits the 2nd objective in the 4th standard of 8th grade core curriculum: Examine the forc

e exerted on objects by gravity.

Now for Celestia:

What did you learn about Celestia?

Celestia is an incredibly cool 3-D space exploration program. It is filled to the brim with the latest information on the exact cuardinates of stars, planets and galaxies. not really designed for surface view, it is more for getting a perspective on the form and scale of the universe.
What instructional problems could you use this technology for?

Helping kids really understand the size and scope of the solar system.

Another is to help them see why Pluto really isn't a planet.

like see here:

Here is the ever famous Hale - Bopp Comet up close and personal. Lets zoom out and take a look at its orbit around the sun.

Hale-Bopp's orbit is shown in red. The other orbits are other comets in our solar system. You can see how they are incredibly elliptical orbits with no real correlation with eachother.

When we compare that to the orbits of the planets we see that planet orbits are very different. The planets are all basically in the same plane and have roughly circular orbits.

Now lets compare this to Pluto and the other dwarf planets. Their orbits are a little less circular than planets, but not as eliptical as comets. They don't have tails like comets do, but they don't orbit on the same plane that planets do. thus we needed a separate category for these comet-like planets, so the dwarf planet category was born.

What are 2-3 activities you could use this technology for in your own teaching?

Again the above activity would be wonderful for teaching the third standard for 6th grade science: Students will understand the relationship and attributes of objects in the solar system.

Another Standard Celestia would be great in helping kids understand is 6th grade science #4: Students will understand the scale of size, distance between objects, movement, and apparent motion (due to Earth's rotation) of objects in the universe and how cultures have understood, related to and used these objects in the night sky.

Which can easily be done with just playing around with the program while taking note of the data on the side.

All in all I am incredibly excited for these programs.