Engaging Teachers and Students in Solar Research: How do Sunspots Evolve? Studying the Morphology and Magnetic Field Strength of Sunspots Over Time

Details Engaging Teachers and Students in Solar Research: How do Sunspots Evolve? Studying the Morphology and Magnetic Field Strength of Sunspots Over Time Engaging Teachers and Students in Solar Research: How do Sunspots Evolve? Studying the Morphology and Magnetic Field Strength of Sunspots Over Time

May 2008

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008aas...212.3702w&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #212, #37.02; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 40, p.235

Physics

Optics

Scientific paper

Astronomy Research Based Science Education (A-RBSE) is a multi-year teacher professional development program sponsored by NSF and administered through the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO). The program reaches the formal education community through a national audience of well-trained high-school teachers. Every year, a new cohort of teachers prepare for research through an on-line course in the spring. In the summer they conduct astronomy research at NOAO, working with astronomer-mentors to gather and analyze their data. They then return to their classrooms and engage their students in inquiry-based astronomy research using this authentic data.
Solar is one of five research areas in the A-RBSE program. Maps of magnetic field strength around active regions are taken with the National Solar Observatory (NSO) McMath-Pierce telescope using 1.565 um, g=3 (Zeeman split) Fe I spectral lines. The field strengths are then compared with the sunspots' sizes over time. The NSO IR Array Camera and Infrared Adaptive Optics are used with the telescope's Main Spectrograph. Data have been taken about twice yearly since 2003. A-RBSE teachers travel to the telescope and participate in the data collection as part of the summer research course. At other times of the year, veteran A-RBSE teachers plus a couple of their students can propose for more telescope time for data collection. Once in the classroom, after analyzing the data, students have often compared the magnetograms, Dopplergrams and intensitygrams to glean a more in-depth model of the morphology and environment of active regions. Presentations on their solar research have been made at science fairs, NSTA, AAS, ASP and AGU meetings. Student and teacher have also published their results in the RBSE Journal.
The poster presentation will elucidate on the IR solar database and software used in the A-RBSE program. For more information, visit http://www.noao.edu/education/arbse/.

Affiliated with

Also associated with

No associations

Rating

Engaging Teachers and Students in Solar Research: How do Sunspots Evolve? Studying the Morphology and Magnetic Field Strength of Sunspots Over Time 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 Engaging Teachers and Students in Solar Research: How do Sunspots Evolve? Studying the Morphology and Magnetic Field Strength of Sunspots Over Time, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Engaging Teachers and Students in Solar Research: How do Sunspots Evolve? Studying the Morphology and Magnetic Field Strength of Sunspots Over Time will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

Comments { 0 }

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-1396093