Astronomy.com blog : publications

A Moon resource guide

Karri Ferron — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 19:07:00 GMT

A waxing gibbous Moon. Astronomy.com member "LATiger" photo

I have a love-hate relationship with the Internet. It makes getting information easier than ever, but it also can make getting the CORRECT information more difficult than ever. Sometimes, it takes a lot of sifting through less-than-reputable sites to find goods ones you can trust. So it’s a bonus when someone else does it for you.

The Astronomy Society of the Pacific has been working to collect series of resources on different astronomy topics for its “Family ASTRO” education program. Among them is one about our nearest celestial neighbor, the Moon.

If you’re looking for complementary online resources to go with Astronomy.com’s “Intro to the sky: The Moon and planets” or the “Observe the Moon with a small telescope” how-to video, this resource is a great place to go. It has links for information about scientific understanding of the Moon as a world, the appearance of the Moon in our skies, and the Moon in popular culture and historical events. Andrew Fraknoi, chair of the astronomy department at Foothill College in California and the person behind this collection, admits that this resource guide is by no means complete, but it is a good place to start as it suggests some resources that may be useful for beginners.

What do you think of this collection of links? Is it a good start for beginners, or do you have other suggestions for sites? Where do you send people who want more information about the Moon?

Hands-on astronomy

Karri Ferron — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 16:52:00 GMT

In its 14th issue, the Astronomy Education Review (AER), a web-based journal about astronomy education and outreach, introduced a new section dedicated to teaching astronomy through demonstrations. John Keller of California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo and Steve Pompea of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory organized a set of seven educator-submitted ideas for hands-on learning in the classroom.

There are a mixture of models, demonstrations, and even a kinesthetic learning activity. And you don’t have to bust your wallet. Some of them would even work as recreation projects for you, your kids, and their friends as well. Getting students actively involved in their learning and providing them with visual opportunities for understanding increases interest and overall retention of information (at least that’s what my friends in education say). So why not try one of these projects out in your house, or encourage the teachers in your area to incorporate one of the demonstrations into their lesson plans? It might engage a new fascination with astronomy.

Interactive astronomy education

Karri Ferron — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 20:10:00 GMT

In August, we asked you if astronomy should be included in middle school or high school curriculums through our Astronomy.com Online Poll. The results overwhelmingly favored including astronomy as either a mandatory or an optional course. Well, even though many schools still don’t include astronomy as a mandatory course (or offer it at all), there are some great computer tools that now educate and let users participate in active research.

In its 13th issue, the Astronomy Education Review (AER), a web-based journal about astronomy education and outreach, has an article that shares some of the best computer-based learning offered through distributed computing. In “Astronomy@Home,” author George S. Mumford of Tufts University describes four web-based programs that allow astronomy students of all ages to have a “hands on” experience with the science.

Many people already know about Galaxy Zoo, a project that enables the greater community to participate in astronomy research online. Just this past August, a Dutch schoolteacher discovered a mysterious astronomical object using the program. In addition to this popular project, there’s Clickworkers, where users search for interesting martian surface features by looking at pictures taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Here at the office, we’ve had difficulty accessing the Clickworkers homepage. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. From home, however, we encountered no such difficulty. For whatever reason, we are able to access the Dawn Mission Clickworkers site with no problem.

Stardust@Home asks volunteers to help uncover the first pristine interstellar dust particles ever brought to Earth; and Systemic, a site that educates users about the hunt for exoplanets.

And even if you don’t have the time to participate in one of these programs, Mumford suggests some other programs (like Einstein@Home, that use your computer to help power research when you aren’t using it. So instead of just having spectacular astroimages pop up on your computer while it sits idle, it could be processing data from different cosmology theories.

Women in astronomy resource guide

Karri Ferron — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 15:15:00 GMT

I have to commend Andrew Fraknoi and the Astronomical Society of the Pacific on a great new web resource that came across my desk yesterday. “Women in Astronomy: An Introductory Resource Guide to Materials in English” is an excellent index for astronomy and history enthusiasts who want to learn more about how the female gender has impacted our study of the universe. It contains print and web references for the general topic of women in astronomy, in addition to references for 32 specific women. And Fraknoi is open to more. His only criterion is that the woman has to have been featured in a popular journal so that her work is explained in a version that students of astronomy can understand.

The web site may be focused on aiding students and educators who wish to cover the topic, but as a history enthusiast, I think it’s great to click on a few of the links in my free time and just read. It’s amazing to learn what some of these women accomplished and the obstacles they had to overcome to do so. And I’m proud to say we’ve covered many of them over the years in the pages of Astronomy.

The poetic side of science writing

Daniel Pendick — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 22:00:00 GMT

Many people — at least, many of the people science writers write for — read to satisfy a basic curiosity about the universe. How does the world work? What’s out there in the unfathomable great beyond of outer space?

Astronomy readers, in particular, enjoy getting their minds bent around improbable ideas like black holes, multi-dimensional universes, and lakes on Titan filled with that stuff in your barbecue grill gas tank.

But can writing about science be more than the imparting of interesting or useful information? Can it be literature, too — what Merriam Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary defines as writings in prose or verse “having excellence of form or expression and expressing ideas of permanent or universal interest”?

The journal Isotope thinks so.

Isotope is a biannual journal of literary writing about science. It covers just about every field you can think of, including astronomy, artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, sexuality, urban ecosystems, restoration ecology, physics, and math. In their own words:

“Isotope: A Journal of Literary Nature and Science Writing. We are a journal of literary nature and science writing. We are a journal of compelling artwork, poems, lyric and narrative essays, microfiction, short stories and regular features such as, ‘Soliloquy,’ in which we invite a writer or artist to respond to a specific question; ‘Voice,’ in which we feature a long piece or several works by a single writer; and ‘Portfolio,’ in which we display the work of a coherent group of artists or several pieces by a single creator.”

“Microfiction”? Hmmm. Does it come with a magnifying lens? Anyway…

You can find back issues with active links to selected writings in the journal here.

I looked for something about astronomy. This one, in the spring/summer 2007 issue, seemed pretty interesting to me because it captures part of the experience of stargazing that Timothy Ferris, a master of literary astronomy writing, calls “ineffable,” meaning an idea or feeling that one must experience to understand, an idea that cannot truly be put into words:

An excerpt from Earthbound
By James Grinwis

“Big sky flexion,
a guess. I unfold
my map. Here is Aldebaran
here is Polaris. Little crevices
slicing the moon. Walking far,
the corrosive light.
To the left, an odd species
of tree, feeding on dawn.

“Earth at night
reveals things we
diurnal folks wouldn’t believe.”