Astrophysics Missions, Grants, and Forum Nuggets for August 2012

Light and Optics Teacher Workshop at McDonald Observatory July , 2012 NASA support provided scholarships for this workshop under grant #NNX10AC68G to Dr. Dan Jaffe In this workshop, 15 teachers explored how astronomers use lenses, mirrors, prisms, and diffraction gratings in building astronomical instruments and telescopes. They built a cardboard spectrometer and Galileoscope, and performed activities that they can do in their own classrooms that explore light at many wavelengths, such as the infrared region of the spectrum. They also learn how NASA develops astronomical instrumentation for its missions.

3 3 New from Kepler EPO, July 2012 A new version of Kepler Starwheel features fewer stars with exoplanets (down to mag 5 instead of mag 6), thus has a cleaner look and better usability than prior versions. Free download at ucation/starwheel/ ucation/starwheel/

4 4 Kepler EPO July 2012 Recordings of public Kepler team presentations made by Bill Borucki, Geoff Marcy, and Gibor Basri at Lawrence Hall of Science, 2012 July 19 are posted at

5 Hubble Ultra Deep Field Workshop OPO’s education team was invited to provide an educator’s workshop to support a two-week “Understanding and Teaching Stars, Galaxies, and Beyond "graduate course. The workshop took place July 11 at the Johns Hopkins University School of Education and focused on the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF). The workshop provided the participating educators with information for incorporating the HUDF image and data in the classroom while addressing skills in classification, comparing and contrasting, and mathematics. This workshop was implemented as part of a new partnership between OPO and Hopkins’ School of Education, and supports the university’s Program. The Earth/Space Graduate Studies Program is offered in collaboration with the Maryland Space Grant Consortium and provides K-12 educators with a graduate certificate or master’s degree in Earth/Space Science. The Earth/Space Science Graduate Certificate Program is a collaborative partnership between the Maryland Space Grant Consortium in Johns Hopkins University’s Department of Physics and Astronomy and the School of Education. The certificate program is designed for educators who want to enhance their knowledge and teaching skills in the earth and space sciences.

Working in partnership with Institute scientific staff and content experts, OPO’s education team designed and implemented a professional development workshop for NASA Explorer School educators on July 17 and July 18. The theme of the workshop, entitled “There’s More to Light than Meets the Eye,” was how light and space telescopes are used as tools in astronomy, and how astronomers make discoveries by examining spectra and different wavelengths of light. During the two-day workshop, participants participated in an overview of both Hubble and Webb and learned about the capabilities of both observatories. They also learned about the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, WorldWide Telescope, and applied their knowledge to an analysis of spectra, galaxies, and planetary atmospheres. The goal of the workshop was to provide participants with experiences that build content knowledge while connecting content to real-world applications in astronomy. The workshop was attended by educators representing schools from several states throughout the country. NASA Explorer Schools Workshop This two-day workshop was implemented as part of a collaborative effort between OPO’s education team, NASA Goddard, and NASA Glenn. The goal of NASA Explorer Schools is to invest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics educators by providing access to NASA’s people, missions, research, and facilities.

7 Lynn Cominsky Sonoma State University Astrophysics Educator Ambassador Training 7/23-27/2012 at Sonoma State University, California Fifteen Astrophysics Educator Ambassadors attended the bi-yearly training week at Sonoma State University. The focus this year was on Gravity and General Relativity, including speakers from SSU’s E/PO missions Fermi, Swift and newly launched NuSTAR. Scientists from Planck, LIGO, GPB and GRAIL/GRACE also participated. There are 15 EAs including 10 for Fermi, 3 for Swift, and 1 each for XMM- Newton and NuSTAR. Six celebrated their 10 th anniversary with the program, which has now trained over 57,000 teachers since EA Christine Royce led a session about the new common core standards and framework EA Linda Smith demonstrated a wave activity for elementary students Swift’s Jamie Kennea explains GRBs