UNL Astronomy Education Support Fund
We are working hard to move forward with simulations and formative assessment materials targeted at current and future technology (smartphones), while still maintaining considerable amounts of older materials in widepread usage. If you have found the educational materials of the https://astro.unl.edu website useful (examples shown below), please consider making a tax-deductible donation to the development effort. This can be done on the NUFoundation https://nufoundation.org/fund/01164090/ on the University of Nebraska Foundation website by clicking the DONATE button. This fund shall be used to support the wages, benefits, equipment, and travel expenses needed by programmers, web designers, and graphic artists developing content and tools for astronomy education. It is under the direction of:
College of Arts and Sciences
University of Nebraska – Lincoln
Union Seasons
One of our first efforts, this simulation coordinates a horizon diagram representation of the Lincoln Sun and Canfield Hall web cam shots of the Union Plaza. It illustrates that the varying midday altitude of the Sun casts shadows of different length throughout the year. This older simulation is available on the web through the use of the Ruffle Flash emulator.
Planetary Positions
This recent Javascript simulation correlates the motions of planets in the plane of our solar system and correspondingly specifies where they show up in the sky in a Lincoln horizon diagram. Partial funding for development of the Planetary Positions Explorer was received from the American Astronomical Society.
Star Trails
The altitude of the North Celestial Pole varies depending upon your latitude can be seen in another recently developed Javascript simulation. Although targeted at smartphones (try the QR-code) it works on all desktop computers and mobile devices. Embedded tasks are available to be assigned to students.
Stellar Lifetimes and Sparklers
This Astronomy Demonstration Video uses groupings of sparklers (1,3, and 7) as an analogy for stellar lifetime motivating that low-mass stars have long lives. It is an example from a series of over 50 short videos is available on YouTube and available on our site as mp4 files. many have peer instruction questions incorporated in them and others have accompanying worksheets.
Student Voting in the Astronomy Classroom
ClassAction is a database of a vast library of visual peer instruction questions that can be dynamically recast into alternate forms and resources for providing feedback on the questions. This screen capture illustrates a sequence of questions based upon a binary system that an instructor delivers to students for voting. The entire ClassAction system may be installed as an Adobe Air Executable for either Win or Mac machines on our Native App web page.