Stellarium: Open Source Night Sky Software
This is a wonderful, practical, easy-to-use program for learning or teaching (or both) about the night sky. Its range of capabilities is so wide that it can easily be used in a kindergarten classroom, a university lecture hall or on your personal computer.
Just visit the site, download according to your platform and start using it. I learned the basics in under 60 seconds, in front of a classroom full of eagerly awaiting students.
(The site provides screenshots but they really don’t do it justice.)
My experience with it: We have been learning about space and just introduced our mini-unit on constellations. This software was by far the most useful, successful and engaging resource we have used to date (aside from thoroughly excited teachers).
The only features we’ve used are the real-time view of the night sky with the horizon showing (you can set it to any time of day) along with the star view, constellation view, then adding and taking away the constellation artwork view. You can speed up the time of day so that you can see the stars change along with the Earth’s rotation. You can also make it go extremely fast just in case you feel like freaking some people out. We have also zoomed in on a particular star and watched the sky rotate around it.
I like this software for two reasons:
1. It shows the night sky more naturally than a flat star chart or picture. Granted, nothing replaces the experience of seeing the stars overhead in the night sky and becoming familiar with the scale.
2. It is open source, meaning it is given freely with the intent of spreading knowledge and resources to anyone with the ability to download it.
Don’t mess with the user guide just yet. Start playing around with it then dive into all of the features and controls.
A few of the features include:
- default catalogue of over 600,000 stars
- extra catalogues with more than 210 million stars
- illustrations of the constellations
- constellations for twelve different cultures – very cool!
- images of nebulae (full Messier catalogue)
- realistic Milky Way
- very realistic atmosphere, sunrise and sunset
- the planets and their satellites
Link to the amazingly thorough and interesting stellariumwiki: http://www.stellarium.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
Many, many thanks to the Stellarium team.
KReATIV Blogger Award
Thanks, Gerwerken!
I have to say that receiving any award for this blog is a wonder. With infrequent, wordy posts ranging from astronomy to kindergarten to privacy rights, Abozzo is certainly not on the reference page of “How To Write a Blog People Will Read.”
That being said, I really like this idea because it is not some coveted award handed down from the bloggods but is passed from individual to individual. Like Gerwerken, I appreciate that.
The rules of the Kreativ Blogger Award are: List 7 things that you love and then pass the award on to 7 bloggers. Of course, let them know they won! You can copy the picture of the award and put it on your sideboard letting the whole wide world know you are KReATIV!
7 Things I Love:
1. Love. Whether it be the love between friends, family members or significant others; the love of ideas, places, scents, tastes, doing things, movies, words, textures, music, etc. I love loving and I do it a lot. I can’t help it. I believe this is what a friend of mine calls, “Making Happy.”
2. My fiance. I would not change one single thing about him.
3. Things that are funny.
4. My band of a few, close friends. I didn’t appreciate or seek out friendship until a few years ago and I’m glad I finally did. While those who I consider to be in my little circle might be astonished given how horrible I have been at keeping in touch, I hope they know how much I love them.
5. The Beatles. Best band ever, period.
6. My job. I love being in a kindergarten classroom every day. It is not an easy job but the rewards are immeasurable. It is a ridiculous, fascinating, exhausting, hilarious, unsanitary, beautiful environment in which to spend the day. Even on the awful days I still love it. Just for the record, I never planned to teach kindergarten. It would have never occurred to me yet this is where I find myself. And I love it.
7. Daring, kind, creative people. These are the people who are truly changing the world, little by little, bit by bit, under the radar, simply and consistently. My Mom was one of them.
Seven blogs I love:
OnSimplicity
Gerwerken Crafts
Raves and Rants of a Homeschool Mom
Small Notebook
The Crafty Crow
Reading Reptile (not a blog but it should be)
Simple Kids
Love simply! Kindergarten-style
As grown-ups we tend to complicate everything, especially love. So in honor of Valentine’s Day I’d like to share some simplicity with you – the simplicity inherent in love that gets covered up by our grown-upness.
Following are a few excerpts from the valentine notes our kindergarten class gave me yesterday. There’s a lot of meaning in those little words!
We could make things a lot easier on ourselves if only we (grown-ups) were able to express and accept such simple sentiments. Maybe this year you can choose one of the following for your Valentine…
Enjoy!
* I love you because I care about you!
* I love you because you help me.
* I love you because you are always happy
* I love you because you love me.
* I love you because you are my valentine.
* I love you because you read with me.
* I love you because I love you.
* I love you because you taught me to fly on the monkey bars.
* I love you because I love you because I love you.
Happy Valentine’s Day!
Events for NASA’s Image Unveiling
2/10/09 – 2/28/09
You can be part of the national event but you may have to hurry.
As part of the IYA2009 celebrations, NASA is unveiling a new multi-wavelength image from its Great Observatories – the Hubble Space Telescope, Spitzer Space Telescope, and Chandra X-Ray Observatory.
Over 100 U.S.-based science centers, museums, planetariums, nature centers and other informal education venues have been selected as sites for the national unveiling. Participating organizations will hold an image unveiling event between February 10 and February 28, 2009 for their local communities.
Find your city’s event location and date here.
Check the list! Many locations are holding their events tomorrow and this weekend to celebrate Galileo’s Birthday (February 15). Others will be held next week.
Maybe it’s just me but I think it’s pretty cool that we can be a part of the same thing from all over the country. We have all been invited by NASA to experience a nationally coordinated local outreach event. That’s cool.
By the way, the image unveiled will be that of Messier 101 (the Pinwheel Galaxy). Why is this an interesting thing for us to see and talk about?
M101 is an extremely large “Grand Design” spiral galaxy in the constellation Ursa Major. At 27 million light years away, it still fills a large swath of sky with its 170,000 light year diameter. This beautiful, face-on galaxy is full of the violent births and deaths of stars. The image below only shows the central third of its face. Imagine what you can see in the new multiwavelength image…
Image Copyright NOAO
Ever look up and see the Big Dipper? Those are the 7 brightest stars of Ursa Major (The Great Bear) which holds this amazing, huge and beautiful galaxy.
Go see the unveiling. The next time you walk outside, look up and see the Big Dipper, you’ll have a bit more to see.
Look up!
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