|
Round 1 - Brown Dwarfs News
Click on any teacher's name to see activities associated with NITARP.
Highlights of team activities
July 2006
The Brown Dwarf team has published an ApJ article which can now be
viewed online entitled "First
Spitzer Space Telescope Observations of Magnetic Cataclysmic
Variables: Evidence of Excess Emission at 3-8 microns" - a pdf
file .
January 2006
The Brown Dwarf group presented two posters at the January AAS - one
on their scientific results and the other on their educational
efforts. Link to ADS abstract
for science poster.
October 2005
Howard Chun ran two in-service workshops on the last two Wednesdays
of October for science teachers in his school district: one on
classroom infrared activities, and the other on multi-wavelength
(including infrared) astronomy research in the science classroom. The
teachers really enjoyed Michelle's IR video. The teachers went away
with new ideas for activities and science fair projects in their
physical science, biology, and chemistry classes. Mr. Chun had ten
teachers attending each workshop. Mr. Chun gave a one hour
lecture on the Spitzer Space telescope, the teacher researcher
program, and our group's research to a group of approximately 50
amateur astronomers at the Seagrave Memorial Observatory in Scituate,
RI. It was a different experience talking to a knowledgeable and
informed audience. He was peppered with questions throughout the
lecture. The Spitzer DVD was very useful. He showed the IR video, the
simulated launch, and the pretty visible to IR pictures. They were
also quite interested in how he used IR in the classroom and with my
students.
Linda Stefaniak finished a long day of four back to back
workshops at the NJ Science Teacher's Convention during the first week
of October. She started with multiple wavelength astronomy and
finished with infrared. Both workshops were well attended and the
video with Dr. Thaller explaining IR was a huge hit. Everyone wanted a
copy. Ms. Stefaniak took digital images of some of the activities for
possible use as illustrations for the group's EPO poster. There was
also an astronomy teacher attending the IR workshop who was extremely
interested in knowing how to become one of the next generation Spitzer
teachers. Beth Thomas presented a session at the state
educator's convention (MEA) and had about 20 people attend. She also
had a friend take a lot of photos at her state convention that could
also be used on the educational outreach poster.
September 2005
Beth Thomas presented a six hour in-service to district teacher
focusing on the electromagnetic spectrum. Half of the in-service
focused on the Spitzer Space Telescope and infrared. She will be
presenting a sectional at the Montana State Teacher's Convention on
the Spitzer Space Telescope and the projects she is involved with.
August 2005
Howard Chun was informed on September 2nd that his group's third
object v347 pav is now available in the archives. He checked the
archives and the IRAC files are ready to be downloaded and processed.
However, the teachers are not ready to process the data yet. The PC
users in his group do not have UNIX or LINUX based computers. Mr. Chun
is still checking for the availablity of a Mac friendly version of
MOPEX. The teachers are nearly ready to create SEDs for gg leo and
AAVSO 0150-60.
July 2005
The data for two objects of the "Detecting Brown Dwarfs in Interacting
Cataclysmic Binaries" project has been archived and released. Teachers
and two students visited the Spitzer Science Center to work on data
analysis with contact scientist Dr. Don Hoard of the Spitzer Science
Center and Dr. Steve Howell of the National Optical Astronomy
Observatory (NOAO). The visit was a great success for all. Linda
Stefaniak presented astronomy workshops. She also attended a week
long workplace readiness workshop the last week in June into July and
got ideas for all her classes.
May 2005
longer work summary (pdf)
April 2005
longer work summary (pdf)
March 2005
longer work summary (pdf)
|
