K-12 – ScienceSpeak Creative

Science Through Backyard Astronomy

July 23, 2020

With so many of us home or not venturing far from home in these COVID-19 times, it’s a great time to do some local backyard astronomy. And you can contribute to valuable citizen science efforts by submitting your observations to GLOBE at Night. This year’s campaign extends through the entire calendar year, so take advantage of any clear skies, do some observing, and be included in this study of light pollution worldwide!

As of July 2020, citizen scientists from around the world have contributed 20,442 night sky observations to help quantify light pollution around the world. Participating is simple: go outside about one hour after sunset and locate the constellation(s) identified for that month.

August: Cygnus , Hercules
September: Cygnus
October: Cygnus, Pegasus
November: Pegasus , Perseus
December: Perseus

(For star-hunting tips as well as Southern Hemisphere constellations, view the GLOBE at Night website.)

*View of Cygnus the Swan in the northern sky, Creative Commons image from Till Credner.*

Once you’ve found the constellation in the sky, compare your observation with a brightness magnitude chart, and report your finding along with your latitude and longitude on the website. You can look at the GLOBE at Night results to see how the light pollution of your skies compares with that in other locations around the world.

This year’s observing period continues through December, so visit the website to learn more, get out there and marvel at the stars, and submit your observation to be counted and contribute to learning more about light pollution, both locally and globally.

Sunrise, Sunset, and Moving Swiftly Through the Days

January 31, 2010

A new month in a new year and it’s gone by far too quickly. I thought I’d close out the lengthening days of January by sharing some interesting sources of information. The pick for today is the NOAA Sunrise/Sunset Calculator, developed by some talented former colleagues. It is a resource used by people in all walks of life—from scientists and sky watchers to film makers and event planners—and a great way to explore what’s going on in terms of the number of hours of daylight received in a day.

According to the calculator, at 40 degrees latitude in the approximate middle of the mountain time zone, the apparent sunrise on January 31 is 7:09 a.m. and apparent sunset is 5:19 p.m. What’s “apparent” sunrise, you ask? Let’s use this graphic from the solar calculator Help Guide (really guys, great work putting this resource together!) to illustrate:

schematic showing reflection of visible light by atmosphere — Gases in Earth\’s atmosphere refract visible light from the Sun.

Earth’s atmosphere refracts (or bends) incoming light from the Sun. Because of that refraction, we see the sun “rise” shortly before it actually crosses the horizon. Likewise, we see the setting sun for a short time after the sun has actually “sunk” below the horizon at the end of a day. (If this part sounds like desperation from a person eager for any at all additional daylight, well, consider that mid-latitude winters sometimes just seem…long.) Apparent sunrise and sunset times are different than actual sunrise and sunset times, adding just that little bit of additional time to the number of hours of daylight in a day.

The nice thing about the end of January sunrise and sunset times is how they differ from the dark, dark days of December. Did we talk about the solstice on December 21? On that day, the apparent sunrise was at 7:18 a.m. but the sun was gone a full 40 minutes earlier, at 4:39 p.m. For those of us desperate enough to grab those few minutes based on apparent sunrise and sunset, 40 minutes seems quite a cause for celebration, or at least acknowledgment. Go ahead, play with sunrise and sunset times for your location, and check out what happens at the summer solstice too.

The State of Science Knowledge, and Water on Earth & Moon

November 20, 2009

This Science Knowledge Quiz from the Pew Research Center first entered my radar when Ian over at AstroBlog posted about it back in August. Even then, I knew it was destined to become blog fodder here at ScienceSpeak, and at last I am returning to the topic.

Ian’s correct: the questions are quite easy and the very large percentage of people who couldn’t correctly answer them is somewhat disheartening. However, because keeping up with and blogging on the science literacy topic can oftentimes be disheartening, I’m going to try to look at the bright side here. About 44% of people answered at least 9 of the 12 questions correctly, and that includes quiz takers with a high school education or less. I suppose it’s difficult to consider less than half of population receiving a passing grade as something other than bleak, but when it comes to recent scientific advances, news, discoveries, etc., sometimes you have to wonder, how *would* people know? It’s not covered in the media, or only very superficially covered in the media, and that’s a whole other topic (one covered very well in the book Unscientific America. Indeed, it’s almost enough to make a person not want to blog.)

So where are people supposed to learn about science? Well, in school, of course, but what if it’s been decades since you were a student? And what if you didn’t pay attention in science class? There’s this idea that if we keep putting the information out there, people will find it somehow. But those of us embarking on this experiment can testify that only people looking for the information will find it.

If you take the quiz on the Pew site, you can see the demographic breakdown of results, by question. There’s a clear age differential for some of them. Only 30% of people over age 65 correctly answered that an electron is smaller than an atom, for example. (Of course, electrons were discovered in the late 1800s, so age can’t be considered an excuse.) Just over 50% of all quiz takers correctly identified how stem cells differ from other cells, which is sad considering that stem cell research is something that has been politicized and so is often in the news, but again, how often do news anchors or politicians or even the researchers themselves actually address what a stem cell is?

Oh, it’s difficult. Maybe the only bright side is that there’s so much room for improvement. So I am going to begin posting scientific facts for my readership, and perhaps those who seek out the information will find it. Then, if they are someday surveyed on science knowledge by the Pew Research Center, they’ll perhaps be able to earn a passing score. If nothing else, maybe they’ll get darn good at getting that green pie in Trivial Pursuit.

For today’s simple science lesson, in honor of water just having been discovered on the Moon (yes, make a note of that, people!), let’s learn about water and the planet Earth. You can find some useful materials here and here. And if you want to learn more about how valuable water on Earth is becoming, look here.

Flying by Mercury

September 30, 2009

New 2009 images of the planet Mercury. Photo credits: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington

Left: This unnamed impact basin, with outer diameter approximately 260 km (160 mi), was seen for the first time on September 29, 2009, during MESSENGER’s third flyby of Mercury. Right: An unnamed crater viewed at close range for the first time on September 29, 2009, during MESSENGER’s third flyby of Mercury. The crater displays an arc-shaped depression known as a pit crater on its floor.

“Participated in collecting ground-breaking views of the last of the eight planets in the solar system to be fully seen.”

Not a bad line for a resume, especially if you are still a 6th grader.

Yesterday, NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft flew by the planet Mercury on its way to establishing orbit around the nearest planet to the Sun in 2011.

The flyby’s ground support on Earth included a team of science educators working hand-in-hand with mission scientists. The science educators were onboard to communicate the findings to classrooms all across the U.S. and give students the opportunity to join in the adventure.

Students were invited to follow updates, ask questions, and participate in live conversations about the preliminary images in real-time as the data were streamed here to Earth. Such exciting opportunities for students to be on the cutting edge of learning about another part of our solar system don’t come along often. It’s also a chance for them to see how scientists approach the exploration process and go about interpreting data. The discussion will continue for a couple more days, so check it out. You can also get your own views of first-ever seen features of Mercury on the mission’s website.