Star+Quest-1

Here is a possible script for Quest 1 of stars.
In the last few weeks we have investigated the solar system to determine what constitutes life and what makes a place habitable. Can we find a habitable planet out in the space by just pointing a telescope to the sky? Well no. That would be like searching for a needle in a haystack. So in this mission we will develop smart strategies on where to search.

To complete the mission we will go on small quests. Our first quest in developing our strategy is to have a quick tour of what is out there and to determine if we can narrow down our search area.

What do you think we will see when we point a telescope?

//STUDENT FILLS IN WORDS planets, stars, galaxies etc. WE DO NOT MOVE ON UNLESS WE GET A RESPONSE FROM THE STUDENT.//

That’s right. Astronomers see individual stars, stars in groups, stellar nurseries, dying stars, galaxies, and other exotic phenomenon. So lets take a tour and see some of them.

Open your WWT. You will see a number of tours. Click on the tour and investigate it. Once you have taken these tours, comeback and we will continue our journey.

- In the WWT or google sky (which ever is the most effective) we generate these tours for the students.

As soon as the WWT is opened, we show the sky for the location of the student and the time of the year. So they see only the stars that are visible for them. Let them mark constellations if they recognize them. If not, we introduce them to some. They can go out and find these constellations if a clear night (They should be able to do this throughout the course).

Next we show the sky as it is seen by a regular telescope (this is basically the SDSS sky that is in google sky). We ask them to recognize the constellations that they saw previously.

Now they take the tours. The distant universe tour In this tour students are shown images of the galaxies, quasars, galaxy interactions etc. Like in google sky, they see the basic image and like in WWT, they can take an image tour that the observatories have generated. The possibilities that I have are in the file “More details for the stars section”. For more details the students should be able to go to the observatory’s exact web page. Once the tour is completed, ask them questions to see if they have understood this tour. For example: What is the most distant object that you have seen on the tour. Ask them about the shapes of galaxies and to give an example for a particular type from the tour Which object did you find interesting and why?

At the end of the 3 questions we provide the students with solutions to the questions or we could work this on a point system and they can attempt as may times as they want to get the most points.

We similarly generate the galaxy tour and the tour of the solar neighborhood. The images for the tour are also in the file “More details for the stars section”.

Our galaxy
Questions at the end of this tour could be: what are the different types of star clusters that you saw on the tour? In the tour you learnt that stars evolve. They are born, they live and then they die. Use the examples shown in the tour to show this evolution. Which object did you find interesting and why? Is a stellar nursery a good location to search for planets? Justify your answer. Is a star cluster a good location to search for planets? Justify your answer. How large is the Milky way galaxy?

Solar neighborhood
Questions at the end of this tour could be: Point a red giant star in the solar neighborhood. Is this star young or old? Point a blue star in the solar neighborhood. Is this star young or old? If it takes XXX days to search for plants around stars, How long do you think it would take to search the stars that are within XXX light years of the Sun. XXX can change for each student!

Relative sizes of stars and planets
In this tour we take the students from inside the solar system out into the solar neighborhood using the objects in the following web locations. This will give the students an idea of scales.

http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6307/783/1600/Planets3.jpg Transit of venus http://www.mreclipse.com/TV/image1/TV2004-140w.JPG http://www.oa.uj.edu.pl/apod/apod/ap001226.html

Questions at the end of this tour could be: If a star in another galaxy had a planet would we be able to detect it? If so why, If not why not? Can we find a planetary system at the far end of the galaxy. If so why, If not why not?

Welcome back. I hope you enjoyed your tour. There are many different objects in the sky to study and investigate. I am sure that you discovered that many of these locations are too far for us to search for extra-solar planets. So are search has to be limited to within our galaxy! From our section on the habitability of the Earth, we know that the central star of a planetary system must be long lasting and stable. So what do you think we should be searching for? What regions do you think we can exclude?

From our tour on the relative sizes we saw that a planet is really very tiny compared to a star. It is like searching for a GIVE EXAMPLE. The Milky way galaxy is also to big for us to find a tiny planet around a star. We can narrow this search further to stars in the Solar neighborhood. Astronomers are searching for planets within 500 light years of the Sun. Hey we have narrowed our search area dramatically, but within this region we have XXX stars. Which ones should we look for? In the next few quests we will determine which types of stars are most suitable for a planetary search.