SkyServer Projects - Teacher's Guides
Our projects are designed to teach astronomy interactively, using the tools that
professional astronomers use. All examples in these projects are taken from real
stars and galaxies as seen by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, the most detailed survey
in the history of astronomy.
These pages give information on how to use SkyServer's projects as an interactive lab
in your science class. The projects were designed to be done individually, but they can
be done in teams as well. Each individual or team will need a computer with Web access.
The table below gives an overview of each project. Click on the project's name
for more detailed information.
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Solar System |
Look through data for thousands of asteroids to learn about the shape of the
Solar System
Estimated time: 3-4 hours
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Scavenger Hunt |
Students use SkyServer's navigation tool to go on a scavenger hunt through
the sky.
Estimated time: 3 hours |
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The Universe |
Students take on the biggest project of
all - the whole universe. They learn
how big the universe is, and how scientists know it is expanding. They then make a
"Hubble Diagram" - a graph of galaxy distances and velocities - to see the expanding
universe for themselves.
Estimated time: 5 hours
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Asteroids! |
Students look through SkyServer data to find asteroids, small chunks of rock
in the inner Solar System.
Estimated time: 1 hour
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Types of Stars |
Students learn how astronomers make sense of the millions of stars that they see.
Estimated time: 3 hours
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Color |
Students look at stars with many amazing colors,
then learn why stars have different colors.
Estimated time: 11 hours. Shorter versions available. |
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Galaxies |
Students develop a classification scheme for galaxies,
then compare it to the Hubble Tuning Fork classfication used by
astronomers. They also learn how galaxies are grouped together, and what
happens when galaxies collide.
Estimated time: 9 hours. Shorter versions available. The last section
of this project requires knowledge from the Color project.
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Neptune image from the National Space Science Data Center
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