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LPI Earth and Space Science Newsletter

August 2007

 

August 28-- Lunar Eclipse

September 15-- Astronomy Day

September 23 -- Autumnal Equinox (the first day of Fall)

 

LPI and ARES One-Day Educator Workshops
Offered at the Harris County Department of Education
Please contact Liliana Maldonado at (713) 696-1307 for registration information, or go to the Harris County Department of Education Web site.

September 12, 2007    Solar System Survey:  Origin and Characteristics of the Solar System
Workshop number 08-01323
Learn about the characteristics and formation of the Sun, Earth, and planets.  We will also explore moons, comets, asteroids, and other space debris. This workshop addresses TAKS Objective 1 – Nature of Science and the science concepts TEKS for Grades 5 through 7 regarding the characteristics of the Earth, Moon, and other components of our solar system, catastrophic events, and the concept of gravity.  Participants will receive extensive presentation materials, reference materials, and hands-on activities for the classroom. Fee: $100, Audience: 5th–8th grade Teachers

October 5, 2007     Mars – It’s Elementary!
Workshop number 08-01324
This one-day workshop uses up-to-date mission information and images to teach Earth and space science. Participants will experience hands-on activities designed for elementary classrooms that investigate Earth soil and compare it to Mars soil simulant.  Through a balance of content and activities, we will investigate the formation of the Red Planet and how it has changed through time, how volcanism, tectonics, impacts, weathering and erosion have affected Mars and Earth. We will explore the evidence of water — past and present — and the possibilities of life on Mars. Participants will experience community and the arts combined with Mars science as they complete an Imagine Mars project. Participants will receive presentation materials, activity packets, posters, CDs, DVDs, and fact sheets. Fee: $100, Audience: Elementary Teachers

NTEN Fall Online Courses are Open for Registration
NTEN's fall 2007 online professional development courses include Elementary Space Science, Elementary Weather, and K-14 Earth Systems Science. Courses are designed specifically for practicing teachers, and start as early as Sept. 10. NTEN is a program of Montana State University, and most courses offer graduate credit.

Star Wars Themed Teacher Camp-In at Space Center Houston
This teacher camp-in on October 26, 2007, includes12 hours of professional development and hands-on, minds-on, TEKS aligned activities.  Teachers participate in a series of grade-appropriate, STAR WARS™ space themed activities. Topics include robotics, simple machines, engineering design challenges, solar energy, space exploration, the universe, math problem solving, and more.  

 

Earth System Science Education Alliance Courses for Teachers
Teachers interested in taking an ESSEA course may inquire about ESSEA by sending an email to [email protected].   ESSEA courses are available at and taught by several different universities across the United States. Three courses are geared toward K-4, 5-8, and 9-12 teachers of geocience or Earth system science.  All courses are generally offered for three semester hours, depending on the sponsoring university. The ESSEA is a program implemented by the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies to improve the quality of geoscience instruction for pre-service, middle, and high school teachers.  ESSEA increases teachers’ access to quality materials, standards-based instructional methods and content knowledge.

 

The Solar System and Beyond Webcast
The next program offered by NASA’s Digital Learning Network will be September 17 at 12 pm Eastern Standard Time. The Solar System and Beyond focuses on NASA missions and exploration. Participants can choose between two concentrations of either solar system exploration or exploration of the universe.  Pre-conference and post-conference activities are available on the Web site.

Louisiana Science Classroom Grants
Apply for a Quality Science and Math (QSM) grant to enhance your math or science classroom! If you are a teacher in a "regular classroom" in a Louisiana public school, you are eligible for up to $750 in funding for materials. The deadline for applications is Friday, Sept 7, 2007. You may contact the Cain Center at [email protected] or 225-578-3322 if you have any questions.

New NASA Lunar Plant Growth Chamber Design Challenge
Students participating in the challenge will design and build their own greenhouse chambers to analyze and study plant growth from the space-flown seeds following their return to Earth. Students will conduct classroom experiments that may help NASA find new ways to grow and sustain plants in space and on the moon - a critical need for future space exploration. Seeds will be available to the first 100,000 registrants for the Lunar Plant Growth Chamber challenge.

Submit Education Abstract to AGU Education Session
Session planners Connie Walker, Steven K. Croft, and Gail Scowcroft invite you to submit abstracts for contributed papers to an educational session at the December American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco: Session ED13 "Teacher Professional Development Programs Promoting Authentic Scientific Research in the Classroom."   The session will focus on research experiences for teachers, the roles of scientists and education specialists, and authentic scientific research in the classroom. Specifically they are interested in soliciting contributions from scientists, education specialists, and teachers who are or have been directly involved with teacher-research experiences. Abstracts submitted electronically are due September 6, 2007. 

Earth Science Week IPY Videoconference
Middle and high school students and teachers in the eastern U.S. are invited to participate in “The Science of IPY,” a live, interactive, one-hour videoconference hosted by local science centers on Friday, Oct. 19, at 9:30 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time. Scientists will take participants on a virtual tour of Earth’s polar regions and explore some of the key questions that scientists are trying to answer about how the poles are changing. Students and teachers will be engaged, including a question-and-answer period with featured scientists. Participants will convene at select science centers in the eastern U.S., the United Kingdom, and France.

 

 

New Unit Lesson Plan from MY NASA DATA
Another Unit Lesson has been added to the Teacher Plans collection: Lesson #49, Using Atmospheric Data Sets in the Classroom: Investigating Ozone, Aerosols, and Clouds by Diana Soehl. MY NASA DATA is an effort to develop microsets of Earth science data providing information on the atmosphere, ocean and land surface along with lesson plans, teacher-friendly documentation, computer tools and an Earth science glossary.   

NASA Educator Feature: Polar-Palooza
The Arctic and Antarctica are not the lifeless, desolate places some people might think they are. Polar bears, penguins and people are just a few of the living things that populate Earth's polar areas. POLAR-PALOOZA is a new multimedia effort to explain the importance of the polar regions and clear up misconceptions some people may have about them.

Space Place Web page: Planet X-Treme Weather
Few places on Earth have perfect weather.  We complain about the heat, the cold, the hurricanes and tornadoes, the rain and snow, or the drought.  But compared to other places in our solar system, even Earth's worst weather is wimpy!   Find out about the hottest, coldest, windiest, and just plain weirdest planets and moons in our neighborhood.

Earth and Space Science Explorers Poster
There is no minimum age requirement to be an explorer. Earth and space science explorers come in all ages. What they have in common is that they all use NASA science and technology to study the home planet or the universe. This downloadable poster highlights some of the explorers in the NASA Earth Explorers and NASA Space Science Explorers series of articles on the NASA.gov education pages.

Dark matter (in blue) is separated from luminous matter (in red) in this galaxy cluster.

New Issue of the Universe in the Classroom Available
The Astronomical Society of the Pacific's latest free education publication is Invisible Galaxies: The Story of Dark Matter. Dark matter makes up 80% of the matter in the universe, yet it is invisible and we're not quite sure what it is. So how do we know that it's there? How does its existence affect the evolution of the universe? Find out in the latest issue of the Universe in the Classroom, where you will also find classroom activities and a list of additional resources related to dark matter.

 

 

Scientists Concerned About Mars Rovers
Modified from http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/newsroom/pressreleases/20070731a.html and http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/status.html

Rover engineers have been concerned about the temperature of vital electronics on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity while the rover stays nearly inactive due to a series of dust storms that has lasted for more than a month. Dust in the atmosphere and dust settling onto Opportunity's solar panels challenges the ability of the solar panels to convert sunlight into enough electricity to supply the rover's needs. The most recent communication from Opportunity, received Monday, July 30, indicates that sunlight over the rover's Meridiani Planum location remains only slightly less obscured than during the dustiest days Opportunity survived in mid-July. With dust now accumulating on the solar panels, the rover is producing barely as much energy as it is using in a very-low-power regimen it has been following since July 18.

Spirit has also accumulated dust, but remains healthy as the amount of dust hoisted into the atmosphere by recent wind storms has leveled off and solar energy levels have held steady at an amount that allows it to continue operations.Given the apparent relative stability of the atmosphere, the rover's handlers have returned to somewhat more normal planning procedures, allowing the rover to take on more science activities.

 

The tiny moon in the red box is the 60th discovered moon orbiting Saturn.

Saturn's 60th Moon Discovered
Modified from http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/features/feature20070719.cfm

Quickly, can you remember how many moons Saturn had when you last looked? When the Cassini mission launched for Saturn in 1997, scientists only knew of 18 moons around the ringed planet. Yet on May 30th of this year, members of Cassini's imaging team noticed the 60th moon, and quickly examined earlier photos to confirm the moon's presence and orbit.

One of the most important reasons for Cassini to chronicle these previously unknown space rocks is so the spacecraft itself does not run into them. Another reason is each discovery helps provide a better understanding about how Saturn's ring system and all its billions upon billions of parts work and interact together. Finally, a discovery of a moon is important because with this new knowledge, the Cassini mission planners and science team can plan to perform science experiments during future observations if and when the opportunity presents itself.

 

This photo by the Galaxy Evolution Explorer, shows the star Mira on the right inside a abulb-shaped cloud, with an extremely long tail trailing behind as it moves through space.

The Star with a Tail
Modified from http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2007-090

NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer has spotted an amazingly long comet-like tail behind a star streaking through space at 291,000 miles per hour. The star, named Mira, is a fast-moving, older star called a red giant that sheds massive amounts of surface material.

The space-based Galaxy Evolution Explorer scanned the popular star during its ongoing survey of the entire sky in ultraviolet light. Astronomers then noticed what looked like a comet. In fact, material blowing off Mira is forming a wake 13 light-years long, or about 10,000 times as wide as our Solar System. Nothing like this has ever been seen before around a star. Astronomers say Mira's tail offers a unique opportunity to study how stars like our Sun die and ultimately seed new solar systems. As Mira hurtles along, its tail sheds carbon, oxygen and other important elements needed for new stars, planets and possibly even life to form. This tail material has been released over the past 30,000 years.