Science Olympiad is a national non-profit organization dedicated to improving the quality of K-12 science education, increasing interest in science for all students, creating a technologically-literate workforce, and providing recognition for outstanding achievement by both students and teachers.
Dear AAVSO Members and Observers,
Dr. Stephanie Slater (Center for Astronomy & Physics Education Research [CAPER] and Capitol College) has requested that active AAVSO members and observers take a survey about basic astronomy knowledge at the following URL:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/2YYX9JQ
The AAVSO has been awarded a new grant from the National Science Foundation. This one is for 3 years and ~$660,000. As with Citizen Sky, it is from their Informal Science Education program. It is titled "Two Eyes, 3D: Studying Stereoscopic Representations in Informal Settings". Aaron Price is the PI with Co-PIs from Tufts University (Dr.
Galina Miklosic has recently translated the table of contents for our Variable Star Astronomy curriculum to Belorussian. Thank you, Galina!
RS Puppis as imaged with the ESO NTT (from Kervella et al. 2008)
RR Lyrae, 1 degree field, DSS I survey plate
(copyright 1993-1995 CalTech/STScI)
Contributed by Tom Fleming (FLET)
"A" Type: One or more tiny spots that do not demonstrate bi-polarity or exhibit penumbra.
"B" Type: Two or more tiny spots that demonstrate bi-polarity but do not exhibit penumbra.
A vast amount of useful and informative material relating to the appearance of the sun at different wavelengths, visual and instrumental observation, and analyses and records of sunspot data are available via the Internet. The list below is intended to provide the new observer with some initial points of contact with this resource. Some entries in the list present the full address required to get to a specific display or table.
What is VSA?
Variable Star Astronomy (VSA) is the web version of Hands-On Astrophysics. Every chapter has been converted to adobe pdf and word doc formats so that you can download them directly from this website free-of-charge.
Distances in the universe are so vast that we do not have a simple way of measuring them. For distances within the solar system we can measure them directly, using radar for example, and some very straightforward trigonometry. But radar is hard to use when it takes light minutes or hours to cross the solar system; and the nearest star is four light years awa
