MPS Internships in Public Science Education - MPS-IPSE: Sensing the Radio Universe

AST-0324729 PI：Michael CastelazInst：PARI公众对宇宙的体验往往受到空间和时间的限制。 可见光谱之外的可观测宇宙常常被忽视。 引人注目的是，报纸、杂志、电视、广播和互联网几乎每天都在播放有关天文学在无线电、毫米波、红外线、紫外线、x射线和伽马射线波长上的发现的新闻。 公众如何看待这些发现？ 该项目由Michael Castelaz博士领导，将开发一个新的便携式天文馆程序，使观众沉浸在无线电宇宙中，让他们亲身体验他们可能从未意识到的电磁频谱的一部分。 该计划将采用一个无线电视图的天空投影在便携式天文馆圆顶，和一个附属投影仪模拟脉冲星闪烁的光，声音，并通过触摸传呼机，观众将得到。 该计划将伴随着一个多媒体演示，可以在讲座或课堂上使用，或在便携式天文馆本身使用。 还将在一个网站上提供多媒体介绍。 无线电天空计划的发展需要具有广泛才能的个人的协同努力，从物理到电子，从艺术和计算机图形到教育。 一个由多媒体和物理专业的本科生组成的团队将为便携式天文馆开发和建造一个投影圆柱体，该投影圆柱体将在无线电波长下投影宇宙的视图，即，无线电天空 学生们还将开发和建造圆柱体的脉冲星投影仪配件。 使用新投影仪的关键是学生开发的多媒体程序，该程序将描述无线电天空。 在两年的时间里，该项目将涉及12名学生，他们将与一名专业天文馆运营商，两名专业天文学家和一名具有天文馆经验的多媒体专家合作。 学生团队开发的项目将影响北卡罗来纳州西部地区，超过50,000名学生和公众将在教室和公共开放日参观便携式天文馆。 在更广泛的范围内，便携式天文馆已在全球超过45个国家销售，估计每年有1200万人参加便携式天文馆计划。 该项目有可能接触到这些人。该项目由MPS多学科活动办公室资助。***

AST-0324729PI: Michael CastelazInst: PARIThe general public's experience with the universe is often limited in space and time. The observable universe beyond the thin slice of the visible spectrum is often overlooked. Strikingly, newspapers and magazines, television and radio, and the internet, broadcast almost daily news about discoveries in astronomy that have been made at radio, millimeter, infrared, ultraviolet, x-ray, and gamma-ray wavelengths. How can the public relate to these discoveries? This project, led by Dr. Michael Castelaz, will develop a new portable planetarium program that will immerse the audience in the radio universe to give them first hand experience with a part of the electromagnetic spectrum they might not otherwise ever be aware of. The program will employ a radio view of the sky projected on the portable planetarium dome, and an accessory projector simulating a pulsar by flashing light, sound, and touch through beepers that the audience will be given. The program will be accompanied by a multimedia presentation that can be used beforehand in a lecture or class situation, or used in the portable planetarium itself. The multimedia presentation will also be available on a website. The development of the radio sky program requires the synergistic efforts of individuals with a broad range of talents from physics to electronics, from art and computer graphics to education. A team of undergraduate multimedia and physics majors will develop and build a projection cylinder for the portable planetarium that projects the view of the universe as seen at radio wavelengths, i.e., the radio sky. The students will also develop and build the pulsar projector accessory for the cylinder. The key to the use of the new projector will be the student developed multimedia program which will describe the radio sky. Over a two-year period the project will involve 12 students who will work with a professional planetarium operator, two professional astronomers, and a multimedia expert with planetarium experience. The programs the student teams develop will impact the western North Carolina region where more than 50,000 students and general public will be visited with the portable planetarium in classrooms and public open houses. On a broader scale, portable planetariums have been sold in over forty-five countries around the world with an estimated 12 million individuals participating in portable planetarium programs each year. The project has the potential to reach these individuals. This project is funded by the MPS Office of Multidisciplinary Activities. ***