SkySurvey: Using SDSS Data in the Classroom

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AST-0225645PI: Szalay, AlexanderInst: Johns Hopkins University Dr. Szalay is awarded funds at Johns Hopkins University to continue expanding, advertising, and evaluating its pilot website, Skyserver (http://skyserver.sdss.org). This site makes data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) freely available to anyone with Internet access. By the time the SDSS is finished in 2005, it will have mapped one-quarter of the entire sky in detail, determining the positions and absolute brightnesses of more than 100 million celestial objects. It will also take spectra of more than a million galaxies and quasars. Dr. Szalay has built a team of astronomers, programmers, science writers, education experts, and teachers in order to reach a wide audience. They have designed several tools to allow students and the general public to easily and intuitively access SDSS data. They are also designing several interactive educational projects in which students use SDSS data to learn concepts from astronomy. For example, students will make Hubble diagrams to show the expansion of the universe, calculate temperatures of stars from spectra, and look for asteroids in SDSS images. All projects will include teachers guides that give complete solutions, advice on teaching the projects to a class, and applicability to national education standards. ***