This article begins with a discussion of the development of the solar system. It also focuses on the fact that in January 2006, NASA plans to launch the New Horizons spacecraft to Pluto-Charon and on to one or more of the icy Kuiper Belt Objects. Sections of the article include: (1) Investigating the Aftermath; (2) Designing a Mission to…

It's important to keep two things in mind when thinking about the cause of the seasons: (1) Earth and all the other planets except Pluto and Mercury move around the Sun in almost perfect circles, getting neither closer nor farther away from the Sun during the year; and (2) Earth's rotation axis is tilted with respect to the plane of its orbit…

Most people have probably heard the tale about the Moon being made out of Swiss cheese because, on Earth, the Moon looks like it is full of holes. Those holes are actually impact craters, circular depressions that formed when objects, such as rocks that orbit the Sun, smashed into the surface of the Moon. The activity described in this article,…

As students continue their monthly plotting of the planets along the ecliptic they should start to notice differences between inner and outer planet orbital motions, and their relative position or separation from the Sun. Both inner and outer planets have direct eastward motion, as well as retrograde motion. Inner planets Mercury and Venus,…

This brief article describes what can be expected of the skies in the summer of 2004 with quite a few celestial thrills to anticipate. In addition to the planet viewing opportunities, there is a very rare Venus transit of the Sun and the annual Perseid meteor shower. The 2004 summer also marks both an end and beginning for the Cassini/Huygens…

Throughout the school year, information and data will be provided through this column so that students can indirectly follow the Earth along the ecliptic, its orbital path around the Sun. From our perspective, it is the Sun that is "moving," so students will actually be graphing the Sun's apparent motion caused by the Earth's real orbital and…

Greek philosopher mathematician, Aristarchus of Samos, in the third century B.C., proposed that the sun held in the central position, casting its light symmetrically outward on the other celestial bodies. He demonstrated the way in which a person could use simple observations and elementary geometry to measure on a cosmic scale.

This past September, students and educators from locations in the Northern Hemisphere and on the equator took part in an investigation of shadows on the equinox called SunShIP. The goals of the Sun Shadow Investigation Project were to collect pictures of midday shadows from various latitude locations and to have the participants use their Sun…

Eclipses typically occur in pairs twice each year, and the second pair for this year will be this month, starting with an annular solar eclipse on October 3, and two weeks later a partial lunar eclipse on October 17. The path of annularity will travel from the North Atlantic Ocean to Spain, where the annular phase will last for more than four…

This article explains the significance of a transit of Venus and relates scientists' efforts at making precise observations of transits over the past 250 years.

The past several years have presented the astronomy education research community with a host of foundational research dissertations in the teaching and learning of astronomy. These PhD candidates have been studying the impact of instructional innovations on student learning and systematically validating astronomy learning assessment instruments,…

Electronic classroom response systems (CRSs) have been in use in large college lectures for over three decades. Such systems are designed to provide instructors and students with immediate statistical analyses of student electronic responses to multiple-choice questions posed to the class by the instructor. The technique known as peer instruction…

This study investigated the images of astronomical scientists held by Turkish primary students by gender. The Draw an Astronomical Scientist Test was administered to 472 students from an urban area. A Chi-Square Test of Independence was used to test for statistically significant differences between gender groups. Significant differences were found…

This article reports the findings of a study examining independent variables that contributed to the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) achievement of students with reading difficulties who participated in a technology-enhanced astronomy curriculum. The curriculum incorporated key elements of the Universal Design for Learning…

A postal survey of high school astronomy teachers strongly confirms many results of an earlier electronic survey. Additional and new results include a measure of the level of inquiry (more structured inquiry and teacher-led) in the classroom as well as data showing that more emphasis is given to traditional topics than to contemporary astronomy…