Astronomy for Teachers, 6th session: 15 February 2006

The main lesson of the TIMSS and PISA international studies: Students will learn what they are taught.

"Science is the engine of the Economy." "We're not born racist, bigoted or uninterested in science." -- Emlyn Koster of the Liberty Science Center.

Announcements

• Pluto's new moons confirmed! These were first discovered in May of 2005, but confirmation of the discovery has had to wait until follow-up observations could be performed.
• The annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science was this past weekend in St. Louis, MO. I was there, and it was great. I met the Executive Directors of the National Science Teacher's Association (Gerry Wheeler) and the National Center for Science Education (Eugenie Scott), the president of New Jersey's Liberty Science Center (Emlyn Koster) and Claudia Dreifus of the New York Times, among many others.

The HR Diagram

The plot ranges should run from -0.5 to 2 for color (B-V) and from to 15 to -5 (for brightest/nearest stars) or 24 to 0 (for the clusters) for magnitude. Yes, the magnitude scale runs backwards! This is because a larger magnitude represents a dimmer star.

Questions to answer: What information do you need in order to calculate these values? If you were missing the distance, how could you determine it?

Brightness proportional to Luminosity over Distance-squared. We have a new step in the distance ladder.