Local educators travel to Arizona for an astronomical adventure

Wisconsin Teachers (left to right) Brandon Olszewski, Evan Gnam, Derek Engebretsen, and UW astronomer Eric Hooper inspect an image of the Owl Nebula, a dying star, they took with the WIYN 0.9-meter telescope. Photo: John Heasley.

Astronomy Department researchers expanded the scope of their ongoing program to involve K-12 educators in research observing runs at telescopes on Kitt Peak, Arizona. 

This past May, four Wisconsin teachers joined UW-Madison astronomers Eric Hooper and Marsha Wolf at the WIYN 0.9-meter and 3.5-meter telescopes. 

The Wisconsin teachers represented the first high school teachers, as well as the first pre-service teachers, to experience the WIYN in Arizona. 

The local teachers included:

• Evan Gnam, a former UW-Madison graduate student in astronomy, who now teaches math, physics, and astronomy at Madison East High School. 
• John Heasley, an English teacher at Richland Center High School, who teaches a course on literature involving Mars.  He is also an avid amateur astronomer and a NASA Solar System Ambassador.
• Derek Engebretsen and Brandon Olszewski, both UW-Madison undergraduate preservice teachers, who trained at Madison East.  Engebretsen just graduated and will begin teaching in the fall, and Olszewski will graduate next spring.  Both also taught in the UW-Madison Physics Learning Center.
  

Despite a tight schedule, the teachers had time to use the electronic detector on the 0.9-m telescope to make images of some of their favorite objects in the sky such as nebulae formed by dying stars, globular and open star clusters, distant galaxies like the Whirlpool Galaxy and even clusters of galaxies. 

The teachers noticed Bucky representing UW-Madison on one of the instruments attached to the WIYN 3.5-meter telescope. Photo: John Heasley.

The impact of the trip will spread far beyond this summer and the four teachers. 

Gnam and Heasley have already enthralled their students with tales of the trip. 

Gnam is processing data for all four to use and Heasley has talked to an amateur group about the experience.  Both are planning activities comparing true and false color using the data they took, plus Engebretsen and Olszewski are planning how to incorporate astronomy into their future physics teaching. 

Wisconsin Teachers Evan Gnam (left) and Derek Engebretsen (right) walk to the WIYN 0.9-meter telescope at sunset. Photo: Brandon Olszewski.

The trip was made possible by the support of Astronomy Department Board of Visitors, Professor Andy Sheinis and Madison East and Richland Center High Schools. 

UW-Madison will continue to use the 0.9-meter telescope for educational purposes this summer, as Hooper will lead its contribution to the Astronomy Camp program, which will be resident on Kitt Peak this June for only the second time in its more than two decade history. 

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Astronomy Board sees Space Shuttle Atlantis up close and personal

The Space Shuttle Atlantis taking off from Kennedy Space Flight Center on May 14.

Members of the Department of Astronomy Board of Visitors, accompanied, by several astronomy faculty and UW Foundation staff, traveled to the Kennedy Space Flight Center to see the final launch of the Space Shuttle Atlantis on May 14.

NASA chief-of-staff and Astronomy alumnus Dave Radzanowski (BS'88) provided VIP opportunities for the Board, including getting very up close and personal with Space Shuttle Endeavor in the Orbiter Processing Facility.

The Space Shuttle Endeavor Orbiter Processing Facility.

Wonderfully, after months of planning by NASA and the Board, the launch was on time and a complete success.

The sound was impressive as expected; more surprising was the brightness of the solid rocket booster exhaust — like a small bit of the Sun lifting the shuttle from the launchpad.

As Atlantis disappeared from view in its chase of the International Space Station, which had just passed overhead, all felt inspired by the launch, mixed with a bit of bittersweet feelings knowing that only a couple more Shuttle launches remain to inspire others younger than us.

Members of the Astronomy Board of Visitors enjoying some sun in Florida on their trip to see the Space Shuttle Atlantis.

As a postscript, Jere Fluno reported that twelve days later he left his dentist's chair in Florida and went outside to hear Atlantis' sonic boom as it came overhead for
its final landing.

Category: Biological & Physical Sciences
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Star Tracker 5000 flies its 8th mission with help from UW astronomers

Dr. Percival (left) standing in front of the rocket that was launched carrying the ST5000. He is wearing a UW Space Place T-Shirt.  Space Place is the Astronomy Department's education and public outreach center. A little bit of Bucky in the desert!

Astronomers sometimes need to use telescopes that are in space because the Earth's atmosphere blocks ultraviolet and X-ray light.

NASA's sounding rocket program sponsors astronomers and graduate students to build telescopes that can be launched into short (15 minute) sub-orbital flights that generate enough data for Ph.D. dissertations.

These rockets need to be pointed at their targets very quickly and very accurately.

Dr. Jeffrey W. Percival and the technical staff of the Department of Astronomy's Space Astronomy Laboratory have invented a device called the Star Tracker 5000, which in seconds calculates the rocket's orientation using whatever stars it first sees and then guides the rocket to its celestial target.

NASA has licensed this invention from UW-Madison for use in the sounding rocket program. The accuracy and speed of the ST5000 represents a generational leap in rocket guidance.

On May 21st, the ST5000 flew again on its 8th mission from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, guiding a University of Colorado experiment.

The flight was a complete success, with the ST5000 capturing an image of the sky, analyzing the initial star pattern, and computing the rocket's orientation in a record 4 seconds, with a precision of about an arcsecond. This was followed by about 400 seconds of X-ray observations of the hot interstellar gas in the direction of the constellation Scorpius.

Category: Biological & Physical Sciences
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Washburn Observatory wins Civic Rehabilitation award

The Washburn Observatory

The newly renovated and restored Washburn Observatory won a Madison Trust for Historic Preservation 2010 Award in the category of Civic Rehabilitation.

The observatory, built 1878, was rehabilitated for modern office use and is now the home of the L&S Honors Program.  The telescope is used by the Department of Astronomy for public viewings.

The rehabilitation was made possible by San Orr of the Nancy Woodson Spire Foundation, and Steve Skolaski of the Oscar Rennebohm Foundation.  Their leadership and support brought new life to this iconic campus building.

• Madison Trust for Historic Preservation 2010 Awards (Wisconsin State Journal)
  

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Astronomy graduate student awarded Fulbright fellowship

Astronomy Graduate Student Ryan Keenan.

Ryan Keenan, a graduate student of the Department of Astronomy was recently awarded a Fulbright fellowship to spend a year doing astronomy research in Chile beginning in March 2011.

Ryan will be collaborating with Dr. Roberto De Propris of the Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory (CTIO) in La Serena, Chile, which houses some of the most powerful telescopes in the world.

Galaxies are known to evolve through various processes, one of the most dramatic being major mergers, which is to say, when two galaxies crash into each other and become one.

This collaboration will focus on understanding how the galaxies we see in the present day universe have been shaped by these collisions.

During this time, Keenan will also be involved in a collaboration with the CTIO Center for Astronomy Education (CADIAS; translated) in bringing astronomy in Spanish to students, rural communities, and the radio airwaves of Chile.

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The Wisconsin Idea heads south over winter break

Ryan Keenan, a graduate student in astronomy, was part of a UW group that traveled to Mexico in January.  Keenan shows a telescope off to a younger student.

In January 2010, the Astronomy Department and UW Space Place collaborated with the UW Center For Global Health in a service learning trip to Wisconsin's sister state of Jalisco, Mexico.

Generousy supported by the Ira and Ineva Reilly Baldwin Wisconsin Idea Endowment, the purpose of the visit was to engage UW students in an ongoing collaboration with their counterparts at the University of Guadalajara's (UDG) Centro Universitario de Los Altos (CUALTOS) campus. 

The group helped facilitate community development, improved public health and educational activities in rural areas outside of Tepatitlan, Jalisco.

The group visited primary and secondary schools, educating students about health risks and hosting health fairs where vaccinations, testing for diabetes and high blood pressure, medicines and dental treatments for kids were made available to the community.

Lastly, the group hosted telescope building workshops and community stargazing events with twelve "Galileoscopes" donated by Space Place. The telescopes were given to rural schools and the outreach staff at the CUALTOS campus.

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L&S gets Twitter-savvy

UW-Madison grows its Twitter community.

A number of Letters & Sciences departments are programs have started Twittering.

Join the conversation!

• Department of Geography
• Department of Economics
• Department of Political Science
• Center for the Humanities
• School of Journalism & Mass Communication
• Lubar Institute for the Study of the Abrahamic Religions
• UW Space Place
• Wisconsin Film Festival

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