Distant Nature: Astronomy Exercises

Created Sept. 30, 2024 by Stephen Tuttle



Horsehead Nebula
B33_HA_DRZ_D9_fc_xMaaiBZ.jpgHorsehead Nebula

Horsehead Nebula


Overview

“Distant Nature: Astronomy Exercises” is a basic set of astronomy related exercises designed to be used as instructional aids in conjunction with textbooks and/or live observational exercises.

Philosophy

“Distant Nature: Astronomy Exercises” is intended for the college level non-science major, or high school science student. It has been designed to augment the teaching of astronomy by providing "Open Educational Resource" exercises covering all major aspects of astronomy utilizing freely available planetarium software. 

The philosophy behind this work is to not only augment astronomy instruction, but to do the following:

  • save the student/institution the cost of traditional hard copy lab manuals
  • significantly reduce or remove the impact of arbitrary software version changes/updates
  • and limit the amount of paper distributed to help the environment

Implementation

We have chosen to use “Stellarium”, a freely available planetarium application, due to its superior functionality and because of its ability to operate on MS Windows®, Apple OSX® and LINUX® operating systems. Please see the "Using Stellarium with Distant Nature" section of this manual for downloading and installation instructions. 

Each exercise is composed of two parts. The first part contains the exercise overview and information about the topic. The second part, the exercise itself, is a linked PDF file at the end of the overview. The PDF contains the procedural steps to accomplish the exercise, questions and places for the student's responses. This PDF contains forms for student responses and can completed through the Adobe Reader forms, or can be printed by the student for completion.

Topics/Exercises

  • Using Stellarium
  • Reading/Using a Star Chart
  • Celestial Coordinates
  • The Earth’s Diurnal Motion
  • The Earth’s Orbital Motion and Seasons
  • Phases of the Moon
  • Orbits of the Planets
  • Phases of Venus
  • Kepler's 3rd Law
  • Newton's form of Kepler’s 3rd Law
  • Stellar Proper Motion
  • The H-R Diagram
  • Blackbody Radiation
  • Our Galaxy, the Milky Way
  • Measuring Galactic Distances
  • Expansion of the Universe
  • The Search for Exoplanets

Images and Astronomy Photographs

All images/animations were prepared by Steve Tuttle. All astrophotography was taken and processed by Steve Tuttle. Screenshots are from Stellarium.

Acknowledgments

I wish to thank Tarrant County College and Weatherford College for supporting my efforts to bring free educational materials to students everywhere.

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