* [[[ WHAT'S THAT SATELLITE? ]]] *
Artificial satellites crop up at several points in the curriculum
(during the day) and at several points in the sky (at night).
To bring the two together, try giving your students an at-home
evening activity of satellite-spotting. The "Heavens Above"
Website http://www.heavens-above.com/ will tell you which
satellites will appear over your location tonight, from which
direction, and when.
It is a good idea to use this site soon, because the brightest
satellites of all time will disappear shortly. Direct your
students to the "Iridium flare" schedule while there is still time.
Mir and the International Space Station are also bright enough
for viewing from, say, a city park.
You need your latitude and longitude of course, and the more
accurately, the better. Students can look up their location in
Heavens Above's large database of towns, but will learn more if
they determine their latitude and longitude from an intreractive
map, like the Xerox map at http://pubweb.parc.xerox.com/map/,
and then use Heavens Above as their answer key.
The Heavens Above site teaches the concepts of stellar magnitude,
azimuth, altitude, points of the compass, and measure of acute
angles -- because to find a satellite you have to use them.
Heavens Above was founded by the German Space Agency, and
is now an advertising-supported private company devoted to
maintaining the Web site. It is suited for junior secondary
grades trigonometry and for satellite topics at any grade level,
though parental assistance will be necessary for the early grades.
----------------------
Network Nuggets is a free service of the Community Learning Network
(http://www.cln.org/) and Open School (http://www.openschool.bc.ca/).
We send these announcements to subscribers on CLN's NetworkNuggets, to
inform them about potentially useful educational resources on the Internet
-- but we are not guaranteeing that these resources will be valuable and
without frustrations.
Network Nuggets Archives: http://www.cln.org/lists/nuggets/archives.html
Subscribe/Unsubscribe Info: http://www.cln.org/lists/nuggets/subscribe.html
Dave Rogers, Interim Moderator of Network Nuggets
(mailto:Nuggets@cln.etc.bc.ca)