The Astro 11 Evening Lab Manual

by Jason Harlow (updated by Michele Stark)

The ASTRO 11 Lab Manual is written by the T.A.s who teach ASTRO 11, and is revised and updated every school year. The original ideas for most of the labs come from a version written by Dr. Dan Weedman many years ago. The manual is published by a small publishing company that specializes in frequently revised, small printing-run textbooks.

The theme of the manual is to introduce the scale of the universe, some of the basic ideas and facts of galactic and extra-galactic astronomy, and to do this through activities and observations made by the student. Students should be able to see the stars and constellations, observe other galaxies and star forming regions, see the nature of light and spectroscopy, learn some techniques of astronomy, and get a feeling for the hugeness of the universe.

Each TA has his or her own opinions and ideas about how the lab should be run. Therefore, it is unlikely that anyone will teach the entire lab straight from the book. Additions, subtractions, and alterations may be made. If one TA comes up with an especially successful idea for a lab, it may become integrated into the following year's published manual. In this way, the students themselves may indirectly contribute to the future of the lab manual through their comments and interaction with the instructor.

1. The Semester Observing Project - Observations of the Moon, planets, stars and galaxies will be collected at the end of the semester.

2. The Changing Sky - Use of the computer program Skyglobe to find different seasonal constellations, and to demonstrate nightly and annual changes in the sky.

3. The Scale of Things: How Big is it? - A summary of the scale of things, from the solar system to the universe, using scale models and analogies

4. Angles, Navigation, and Data Analysis - Celestial navigation and data analysis, using observations in the planetarium.

5. Planetary Orbits and Kepler's Laws - An examination of Kepler's three laws, which describe the motions of the planets using the program Orbit Maker

6. Parallax and the Distances to the Stars - Parallax concepts and their use for measuring distances to the stars.

7. Spectroscopy of Stars and Galaxies - How we use spectroscopy to tell us the chemical content, velocity, and physical properties of distant stars and galaxies.

8. The Inverse Square Law of Light - Use of light meters to learn about the inverse square relation for light.

9. Understanding the Stars - The luminosity-temperature diagram, using data on the closest and brightest stars, and what it shows about the nature of the stars.

10. The Lives of the Stars - Stellar evolution and evolutionary states using astronomical data and luminosity-temperature diagrams.

11. The Structure of the Milky Way Galaxy - Structure of our Milky Way Galaxy through the study of globular clusters and young groups of stars.

12. The Local Group and the Hubble Deep Field - Galaxy locations, distance measurements, and a look into the past using images from the Hubble Space Telescope.

13. Distances to Galaxies - Visits to various web pages illustrate how to estimate the large distances to other galaxies.

14. Distant Galaxies and the Expanding Universe - Measurements of distant galaxies and a derivation that the universe is expanding. Also, we determine the age of the universe.

15. The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence - Using the Drake Equation to estimate the number of other civilizations in our galaxy.

16. The Moon and Its Phases - the phases of the Moon and the relationship between the Sun, Earth, and Moon.

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