Teachers doing Binary Star Observations for the United States Naval Observatory

Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy

Scientific paper

Rate now

  [ 0.00 ] – not rated yet Voters 0   Comments 0

Details

1

Scientific paper

During the summer of 2002 seven science teachers made observations of visual binary stars listed as "neglected" in the Washington Double Star Catalog (WDS) maintained at the United States Naval Observatory (USNO). In the "Binary Star Project" these teachers took CCD images of binary stars with a B&C 16 inch telescope at Georgia State University's Hard Labor Creek Observatory. Updated position angles and angular separations were measured and submitted to USNO. These data are now included as part of the WDS and the teachers written manuscripts are now archived at the USNO library.
The purpose of this project was to give science teachers an opportunity to do some real science. The National Science Education Standards are encouraging science teachers to to use scientific inquiry as part of their pedagogy. However, most science teachers have never actually done any scientific research. One goal of this project was to provide science teachers with the opportunity to do some basic astronomy research that would make an authentic contribution to scientific knowledge. Thus, giving them some needed experience doing a scientific investigation. A second purpose was to couple this research with historical astronomy to do explicit instruction on the nature of science and scientific inquiy. By doing this, additional astronomy content was covered, which included Kepler's Laws, the Sun, and Stellar Evolution.
The experiences of these teachers and their binary star results will be presented.

No associations

LandOfFree

Say what you really think

Search LandOfFree.com for scientists and scientific papers. Rate them and share your experience with other people.

Rating

Teachers doing Binary Star Observations for the United States Naval Observatory does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.

If you have personal experience with Teachers doing Binary Star Observations for the United States Naval Observatory, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Teachers doing Binary Star Observations for the United States Naval Observatory will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

     

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-1423589

  Search
All data on this website is collected from public sources. Our data reflects the most accurate information available at the time of publication.