Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Dec 2007
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007aas...211.7008b&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #211, #70.08; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 39, p.861
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
We present a lab on the November 8, 2006 transit of Mercury for college introductory astronomy students. We first performed the lab live during the transit, using online SOHO telescope images. Students use a solar map transparency, sized to overlay the SOHO images, to plot sunspots and Mercury's changing position. They measure their images of sun and sunspots to calculate sunspot size. They measure the apparent angular size of Mercury's trajectory, between first and last time-stamped observations. They then calculate two corrections to this apparent angular size: first, to account for the Earth's rotation about the sun (since SOHO images remain Earth-facing); and second, to convert angular size seen from Earth to angular distance around the sun. Both corrections are explained simply, then implemented by a single plug-in formula; built in to the formulae are Mercury and Earth's angular velocities and orbit radii on the day of transit. Students then calculate --- again with a one-step formula --- Mercury's orbital velocity on the day of transit. Finally, students interpret the sensibility of their result, given Mercury's known range for orbital speed and distance to the sun, and their understanding of Kepler's second law.
The two corrections, simply implemented for nonscience majors to calculate, are sufficient to give sensible results for Mercury's orbital speed. This gives students a rare opportunity to measure planetary orbits and evaluate Kepler's law, while observing an exciting astronomical event. This lab can be performed with online images of the 2006 Mercury transit, or adapted for live use in future transits. It fills a unique niche in the transit lab literature: not wholly qualitative, involving only plotting; and not unduly sophisticated, like transit labs concerning parallax effects.
We will provide lab materials and web pointers at the talk; we acknowledge support from NSF grant PHY-0457140.
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