recent posts
- Hello, World!
- At Play in the Classroom for Thirty-Five Years: Recollections and Recommendations for Keeping Our Spirits—and Our Students—Soaring
- Reaching every student in your General Education class
- Classroom Stories: Teaching Astronomy to Primarily Non-science Students in Group-setting Activities, by Sandi Brenner (Bryant University)
- JWST Carina Nebula
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Category: Current Events
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We are so lucky to have a spiffy new telescope that has captured the public imagination over the summer! I used the first group of five images (one is really a spectrum, but for simplicity, I’ll refer to them all as images here!) to introduce the course to my Astro101 students this semester, and it…
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By Stacy Palen ALMA continues to delight us with its unsurpassed and exquisite resolution and sensitivity. In this case, we have the first clear detection of a moon-forming disc around a planet orbiting a very, very young star. Below are some questions to ask your students based on this article. 1). What is extraordinary about…
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By Stacy Palen Astronomers set a new record for the densest known white dwarf. Below are some questions to ask your students about this article. 1). How is a white dwarf typically formed? Answer: A star less than about 8 times the mass of the Sun loses its outer layers, leaving behind a dense carbon…
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By Stacy Palen The two main ways to measure the expansion of the universe have turned in different answers. For the last several years, astronomers have been arguing about whether this disagreement is unimportant (a result of measurement errors) or important (a result of new, unknown physics). This is a terrific example of the process…
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By Stacy Palen The Milky Way is tearing apart the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy. Gaia observations of the resulting tidal streams permit sufficient accuracy to detect the influence of the Large Magellanic Cloud on the interaction. Simulations show that the Milky Way’s dark matter halo is complex. Below are some questions to ask your students based…
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By Stacy Palen The Mars InSight lander is using marsquakes to probe the interior of Mars. In July 2021, the first clutch of papers on the results were published. Below are some questions to ask your students based on this article. 1). What is a marsquake? Answer: It’s like an earthquake, but on Mars. While…
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By Stacy Palen A reanalysis of Magellan images has led to the hypothesis that Venus has “campi,” or blocks of rock that float on the mantle, shimmying and bumping into each other like packs of ice. Below are some questions to ask your students based on this article. 1). Describe plate tectonics on Earth. Answer:…
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By Stacy Palen How delightful! The phases of the Moon were in the news in late March, giving all of us an opportunity to teach students about the practical applications of astronomy in the modern world. You will likely recall the giant container ship that was stuck in the Suez Canal for almost a week,…
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By Stacy Palen Sometimes, you just want to look at a lot of pretty pictures. Juno’s got ‘em. This is a nice intersection of science and society because there are issues of intellectual property rights here that can prompt students to think a little more deeply about who owns science and scientific data. Below are…
Teaching Astronomy by Doing Astronomy 