Thank you for visiting my blog page. I’ve decided to begin posting my blogs and articles on the social media platform, Medium. Please visit my Medium profile to read more stories. See below for previous blog entries pre-Medium. Thanks!
High School Galaxy Explorers Team Search for Exoplanet Transit
Daniel with the Galaxy Explorer high school students. Click HERE to read the full blog article.
“When I was in high school, I got to use these digital smart telescopes to help SETI Institute astronomers with a global citizen science campaign to further characterize a recently discovered sub-Saturn-sized planet around a star over 619 light years away from planet Earth.”
These words are a quote from the future from a high school student involved in a February 2023 observational marathon of a NASA Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) planet candidate. Ignoring my ability to time travel, most would agree that that’s a pretty rad statement from a high school student. Even though I’m slinging words like “rad,” I’m not that old. When I was in high school, the only humans taking data from exoplanets were professional scientists using research observatories and advanced technical telescopes.
Today, we’re trying to make science and astronomy more accessible and democratic, and give students the opportunity for more engaging learning with real-life applications and skills. Advances in technology and inspiring education initiatives have allowed experiences like this to happen. The Unistellar Exoplanet Campaign utilizes small backpack-sized digital smart telescopes, called Unistellar Enhanced Vision Telescopes (eVscopes), to engage citizen astronomers to collect research-quality data on exoplanet transits. An exoplanet transit is when a planet outside our solar system transits its host star from our perspective, which creates a drop in its star’s brightness over time. Young students, mostly in high school, received three eVscopes last year from a generous Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation grant. They joined this exoplanet network as part of their experience with the Chabot Space & Science Center’s Galaxy Explorer program (Oakland, CA).
TO READ THE FULL BLOG PLEASE VISIT ON SETI.ORG BY CLICKING HERE
How I plan to help save science education with the Unistellar eVscope!
IMPORTANT UPDATE: My research team is running a GoFundMe to place these Unistellar eVscopes into the hands of teachers and students around the world (South America, Europe, Africa, Australia, etc.). Please go to https://gf.me/u/y767zz or see below for more info.
Lightning strikes a dream
Several weeks ago I had a dream during the intense lightning storms in and around San Francisco and the greater Bay Area, which then sparked some of the devastating wildfires that we are still recovering from and experiencing.
In this dream, I was in my high school chemistry class. My group was asked to answer the problem on the board and when we went up and didn’t know the answer, everyone, including the teacher (and Nelson from the Simpsons), laughed at us. This inspired me to share the failure of the American education system with my students and how the current system values answers over process and problem solving while squashing their creativity and curiosity. Process, problem solving, knowing how to think rather than what, and curiosity and creativity are intrinsic and vital skills for science, education, and innovation in our modern time.
Neil deGrasse Tyson on how our education system and society values answers over the process of thinking and problem solving. Who would you hire, the fact spewer or problem solver?
The American education system is broken
Our students frequently experience these type of responses to their curiosity, creativity, and ambitions: stop asking questions, shut up, listen, do what you’re told, and your dreams are unrealistic. I’m sure you and I have also experienced this. Think of an example of a child splashing in the puddle and being told to stop because he or she was making a mess. We’re told at our earliest age and throughout life to stop being curious. Our creativity, curiosity, and aspirations are not encouraged and developed and most of us live our lives hardened and accepting of the life we live, but deep inside feel a longing for what could have been and in response unconsciously show our resentment on the world through our contributions to keeping the status quo that keeps churning out unhappy people. The untapped potential in this world to create, innovate, discover, make peace, and to to just be happy is many orders of magnitude larger than it should be.
““What makes someone successful in the 21st century is definitely not your ability to memorize facts. What will make someone successful is your relentless capacity to innovate, to create. It’s your ability to network, to make friends from your own circle and from other countries. It’s your ability to see through challenges, to look for opportunities in problems, and to take action to change things instead of waiting for someone else to do something.””
Schools continue to teach us that we are just empty vessels to be filled with information. The currency in the classroom is grades, but I would argue that grades do not matter. Grades do not qualify or transform you into becoming a mover and shaker of tomorrow. Some of the greatest minds and innovators in history never finished school, or performed average, below average, or because of their disdain for the status-quo changed the world and made progressive positive impacts on society.
Most classrooms also deny culture and diversity. Students of color, women, and indigenous people are continually shown that they don’t fit the mold that the system has carved out and continues to manufacture. Even while many great reformers are trying to make a change and some progress has been made, the fact is that the system is fundamentally broken. The wheel doesn’t need to be stopped or repurposed, it needs to be broken and replaced.
When somebody takes up their own initiative, follows their drive, listens to their ambitions, embraces their curiosity, and explores their creativity amazing things can happen. If we replaced the education system into one that encourages and develops collaborative processes, creativity, problem solving, curiosity, and other reasoning skills for all students regardless of color or gender from the earliest age through high school and beyond, I claim we would transform our society into a conveyor belt of movers and shakers, innovators, free thinkers, and happy driven citizens.
Science and economy in peril
I claim that these reformations are not just vital for general education, but extremely important for science education, and also for our society at large. Many studies argue that our 21st century success depends on our population’s ability in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) and that this success correlates directly with achievement in STEM education (see NSF Prepare and Inspire for one example). The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) provides a comprehensive assessment of a country’s students’ proficiency levels in STEM and the United States has ranked below average in several recent assessments (see PISA 2018).
Picture Credit: marketingmagazine.com
Other studies have shown that American students across all socioeconomic levels score lower in literacy, numeracy, and problem-solving skills than in most countries of the world (see Gaze 2015 article). Lastly, there is a lack of interest of students entering STEM and a brain drain occurring. For the drain, many brilliant minds that do pursue STEM in post-graduate studies come from other countries. These students and professionals have made fantastic innovations and driven our economies. However, now many are leaving America for other countries where there are more opportunities and acceptance than in the US. In other countries, they are even starting their own world-class universities. America if falling way behind and fast.
So what should we do? A lot of brilliant researchers and educators (some quoted, citied, or in video here) have great ideas on how to make our education system better. We should study their ideas and others, and work to change within our communities, as well as at local schools and eventually the national education system. You should educate yourself, be open minded, and you need to vote!
The Unistellar eVscope
In the meantime, while you work on changing the system (hey, we have to do this together), I have some ideas of how I’m going to make an impact in my own way. I plan to utilize a new innovative telescope, the Unistellar eVscope, in K-14 schools with a citizen science initiative for exoplanets using the proven education inquiry-based science pedagogy, Modeling Instruction, mixed together with some rad project-based science units. These plans will also contribute to one portion of my PhD thesis with the University of Southern Queensland to develop an exoplanet citizen science program in education.
The eVscope is portable, easy to set up, and fits in a backpack. Photo: courtesy Unistellar
The Unistellar eVscope is a smart autonomous consumer telescope that is controlled entirely with the user’s smartphone through its innovative app. The telescope and app allow users to align, steer, select deep space objects (such as galaxies, star clusters, and nebulae), and contribute to citizen science projects with a simple touch. Its light amplification power and Enhanced Vision technology allow sky watchers to enjoy beautiful images of the cosmos even in our light polluted skies.
““Unistellar’s goal is to make observational astronomy more enjoyable, accessible, and easier while developing new citizen science programs and increased interest and participation in astronomy in general.” ”
The lone ability to have a robotic telescope bring the night sky back to us light-polluted city dwellers, and be accessible to its users (i.e. no technical knowledge required, however, techies may want to check out the important instrument information below) is an exciting reality with this telescope. However, in my opinion, that is not the most exciting part. In 2019, the SETI Institute signed an MOU with Unistellar to develop their citizen science network and connect users with professional astronomers so they and their eVscopes can contribute to real scientific research concerning comets, supernovae, planetary defense, and exoplanets (see SETI/Unistellar partnership article).
Unistellar eVscope technical info: “Unistellar's new eVscope is a 4.5” (11.4 cm) Newtonian-like (focal length = 450 mm, magnification of 50) telescope designed specifically to work in urban and countryside environments . . . [It] is equipped with a sensor located at the prime focus of the telescope. The sensor is a CMOS low-light detector IMX224 (1/3-type, 1.27 megapixels, 12-bit, up to 60 fps) produced by Sony and characterized by a gain amplifier of up to 72 dB and a low read noise of less than 1 e- which allows us to record multiple frames with exposure times between 1 ms and 4 s. An on-board computer stacks and processes those frames (dark and background removal, shift-adding and stacking) to produce an improved image which is projected in real time through the electronics eyepiece. Each individual frame is stored in the telescope and can be accessed in 12-bit TIFF format by the user for a posteriori data processing and analysis.” (Marchis et al., 2020)
The eVscope has already proved itself capable of contributing to citizen science efforts concerning comets, asteroids and planetary defense, and detecting exoplanets orbiting distant stars in our galaxy (see Detecting Exoplanets and Asteroids: First Citizen Science Successes for Backyard Astronomy and Fragmentation of comet ATLAS observed on the first crowd-sourced pictures from citizen astronomers). The future of citizen science astronomy with this instrument is very bright (even if the stars eVscopes can observe in light polluted skies are not[1] 😉) and I can imagine thousands of telescopes around the world improving upon the signal-to-noise ratio of data collected on important scientific targets while engaging and educating the people of this planet.
[1] eVscopes have observed Pluto, Vmag=14.5, from downtown urban environments (Marchis et al. 2020)
Exoplanet science
Astronomers have found planets similar to Tatooine in Star Wars that orbit around two stars. See Jonti Horner’s article on Kepler-16 (AB)-b that explains this find and phenomenon. Image: www.starwars.com
Exoplanets are planets that orbit stars other than our own Sun. These extrasolar planets were once only realized in science fiction until the first discovered exoplanets were confirmed in the 1990s. Since then, the field of exoplanet research accelerated with the NASA Kepler spacecraft mission, which found thousands of exoplanets in our galaxy. It is now known that at least one exoplanet exists per star in our Milky Way galaxy (Cassan et al. 2012). What kind of exoplanets are out there? Do they look like and have the same characteristics as the planets in our solar system? Do any of them have life? Is there another earth? These are just some of the many questions around this exciting field of research, and some of these questions are starting to have answers. However, with hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy there are a lot of possibilities, and a lot of space to explore!
NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), currently in operation, is the follow-up to the successful Kepler mission. Its goal is to survey most of the sky for close by exoplanets and find the best Earth or super-Earth sized planets for future missions capable of further characterization, such as determining the makeup of their atmospheres and searching for possible biosignatures, which could indicate the presence of life. Image: NASA
How are these exoplanets found? There are many different exoplanet detection methods, but the most successful and well-known technique is the transit photometry method. With this method, astronomers point their telescopes to a star that may have an exoplanet orbiting around it and if they detect a dimming of the star’s light over time, then that could be indicative of a planet transiting in front of the star from our perspective (see How Do We Detect Exoplanets? from Planetary Society below). However, these candidate exoplanets, many of which are found by space-based telescopes like Kepler and TESS, need to be confirmed by ground-based telescopes to confirm their existence, rule-out false-positives, and conduct other measurements to further characterize the planet.
Learn more about different exoplanet detection techniques at the Planetary Society’s website
Citizen science astronomers have been very clever and have been able to detect exoplanets through the transit method for decades. In fact, the first confirmed transiting exoplanet, HD 209458b, although observed by professional astronomers, utilized equipment accessible to most astronomy hobbyists and proved that small telescopes could participate in this work. Their observation of this historic transit was done with a 4-inch telescope with a charge-coupled device (CCD) that astronomer, Tim Brown, built in his garage (Sincell, 1999).
Citizen astronomers today use consumer telescopes outfitted with expensive digital cameras, filters, and tracking devices to detect exoplanets and have been involved with professional astronomers for various exoplanet follow-up campaigns, such as the Kilodegree Extremely Little Telescope Follow-up Network (KELT-FUN) (Collins et al., 2018). Additionally, there are some online groups and organizations that support citizen astronomers in exoplanet detection, such as Dennis Conti, and his exoplanet group at the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO). Dennis even has some wonderful tutorials and a self-published guide to exoplanet observing available for free on his website, https://astrodennis.com.
Advanced and technical citizen scientists with elaborate setups.
Some citizen exoplanet astronomers have been very crafty with their equipment. Take this DIY setup with a $93 DSLR camera and tracking mount made from parts at a hardware store, which detected exoplanet, HD 189733 (Schneider, 2014).
The many citizen astronomers, observing exoplanets is admirable and inspiring. However, undertaking an exoplanet observation and data analysis using your own equipment and open-source software requires advanced technical skills and knowledge that most astronomy enthusiasts and telescope owners are unlikely to adopt and learn. This is exactly why the Unistellar eVscope is such a special instrument that has the potential to dramatically change how citizen science astronomy is performed—it’s easy to use, compact, fun, powerful, and has the resources and network of the SETI Institute to drive its development.
eVscopes and exoplanet science
Results are promising! The Unistellar network has been successful in detecting several exoplanet transits. Most notable is the detection of exoplanet Qatar-1b by citizen astronomer, Julien de Lambilly, with his eVscope in Switzerland in April 2020. Since then, the network of over a thousand eVscopes has contributed to Unistellar projects with 35+ transit light curves collected by amateur astronomers, but also newcomers in the field who had never conducted scientific observations in the past.
Transit light curves are used to model an exoplanet transit from collected data. The light curve above shows the transit of gas giant, Qatar-1b, and was processed using the EXOTIC photometry and modeling package (Zellem et al., 2020).
Students and teachers using Unistellar eVscopes can contribute to exoplanet science by helping to confirm candidate exoplanets, but also through NASA’s Exoplanet Watch program. Exoplanet Watch, led by Rob Zellem, is a citizen science initiative to make studies by large professional telescopes more efficient in the future. Large space-based missions that will proceed TESS, such as the James Webb Space Telescope, ARIEL, and PLATO, will look more deeply at the most interesting exoplanets found by TESS to study their atmospheres and search for possible signs of life. However exciting these future missions and their potential discovered are, Zellem et al. (2020) note that the mid-transit times and ephemerides for these planets become “stale” (i.e. the predicted times of future transits will be less accurate) over time and small citizen science telescopes, like the Unistellar eVscope, can help keep these times “fresh” so that when these telescopes launch they are able to efficiently conduct important science on these planets.
Supporting NASA TESS and future exoplanet missions, Exoplanet Watch, Unistellar, the SETI Institute and my contributions via USQ with my teacher/student citizen science network will work to keep transit times fresh and help improve exoplanet research
Other possible benefits of an eVscope exoplanet network include confirming candidate planets, observing long-period (>100 day) exoplanets to detect rings or moons, observing gravitational perturbations (TTVs—transit timing variations) to detect super-Earths, and searching for new exoplanets around less common stars, such as white dwarfs. Lastly, for another portion of my PhD, I am using the University of Southern Queensland’s (USQ) MINERVA-Australis telescope array for NASA TESS exoplanet follow-up and characterization. A network of eVscope citizen scientists at schools could help follow-up, confirm, and/or improve data collection for targets we look at with these professional instruments, which would help support the hypothesis that this network would help the greater exoplanet research community.
My project goals with education and the eVscope, exoplanets, and classrooms across the world. . .
PHOTO/ PIXABAY
IMAGINE being in your high school physics, earth science, or middle or elementary school science class and told that you are going to be in charge of detecting and characterizing a planet around a distant star to help contribute to the search for life in the universe. IMAGINE, as a student, being told that you would be in charge of this project with your peers in a collaborative team under the guidance of your teacher and a professional astronomer—treated as equals and professionals—to plan an observation, analyze the data, conduct science outreach, and in some cases publish your work in a junior academic journal. IMAGINE being a teacher and being told that you could do real publishable science with your students that is exciting and also be able to meet your course’s state science standards (e.g. the reformed more inquiry-based, Next Generation Science Standards, NGSS). IMAGINE being an astronomer and being able to initiate a network of eager citizen scientist students to contribute to your project while also making a lasting and rewarding impact with their communities.
As an education associate at the SETI Institute, my goal is to make those imaginings a reality by placing eVscopes in diverse communities and their Title I schools (low-income) and education centers, and develop a curriculum and teacher training program for a completely student-centered project-based and inquiry-based science learning experience.
EVSCOPE TEACHERS TO USE Citizen science PBL and Modeling Instruction astronomy
Citizen Science PBL:
What is citizen science PBL? PBL is an acronym for project-based learning. PBL is a somewhat new approach to teaching students through immersive and engaging projects instead of your standard direct-instruction, listen, take notes, and take an exam approach. The idea is as old as famous educator, John Dewey, and his education philosophy of “learning by doing” from 1916 (Dewey). In effective PBL, motivation and engagement increases in students when the projects that they are involved with have benefits to society, real-world applications, value, are authentic, and/or are meaningful (Bell, 2010; Blumenfeld et al., 1991; Fortus et al., 2005). In PBL, the students are driving their own learning through inquiry (Bell, 2010). Empirical evidence has shown that this student-centered and interactive approach can also greatly improve student learning, problem solving, and analytical thinking skills in answering high-order questions (Hall & Miro, 2016) common in the field of science.
What is citizen science? Citizen science is scientific research mainly performed by the general public in collaboration with professional scientists in the field. There is evidence to show that involving students in citizen science specific PBL activities can increase motivation and engagement (Bell 2010; Blumenfeld et al. 1991; Fortus et al. 2005; Green et al. 2012; Jenkins 2011) and has been shown to work well with female and male students from various racial, ethnic, underserved, and urban environments (Geier 2008; Harris et al 2015).
Modeling Instruction, GHOU, and Modeling Instruction Astronomy:
Modeling Instruction is an inquiry-based science pedagogy developed by high school physics teacher, Malcolm Wells, and physicist, David Hestenes, in the 1980s and 90s (Wells et al., 1995) that aligns perfectly with the NGSS initiative. It has enjoyed support by the National Science Foundation (NSF) for over 20 years. With Modeling Instruction, there is no lecturing or direct-instruction. The teacher acts as “guide on the side” rather than “sage on the stage,” and student-centered inquiry takes the fore as students construct, validate and apply the fundamental conceptual models of the discipline, doing science as scientists do.
Modeling pedagogy has been shown to be extremely effective across the science disciplines, empowering teachers with both confidence and competence, especially out-of-field teachers (Haag & Megowan 2015). Modeling Instruction initially was funded by a 16-year series of grants from the NSF for 16 years. When this funding expired in 2005, the Modeling teacher community took over, founding the American Modeling Teachers Association (AMTA), a 501(c)(3) non-profit, to continue this work. Originally just for physics teaching, AMTA has expanded its Modeling Workshop offerings to include chemistry, biology, physical science, middle school science, and most recently astronomy.
““If a teacher is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house of his wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind””
Dan at the Modeling Instruction Astronomy workshop at the University of Louisville (July 2019).
Global Hands-On Universe (G-HOU), is an astronomy education initiative developed by an international team coordinated by astronomy educator and astrophysicist, Carl Pennypacker, to improve upon and make astronomy education more powerful by giving teachers and their students access to robotic telescopes, training them in astronomical data analysis, and to learn to make models and grow their understanding and inspiration from their work with real data. G-HOU partnered with AMTA in 2016 to develop the first ever Modeling Instruction Astronomy workshop to train teachers on the Modeling Instruction pedagogy and applied to astronomy education. With Modeling Astronomy, teachers help students build, test and deploy the fundamental conceptual models of astronomy using the same scientific processes and techniques that professional astronomers use.
Hopes and conclusions . . .
Past exoplanet citizen science initiatives have been successful, however, most have not succeeded in extending their reach past dedicated amateur astronomers with highly technical abilities, or they have focused mainly on big data analysis games mostly adopted by astronomy enthusiasts (e.g. Planet Hunter’s Zooniverse). There are some notable projects that are doing some fantastic work with exoplanet research in education including the Las Cumbres Observatory, EduTwinkle, and others that allow students to access remote telescopes from computers.
Our project aims to place the entire process into the hands of educators and their students. Students and their teachers will have their own mobile observatories—Unistellar eVscopes—to conduct their own observations, they will work together to analyze the data to learn important scientific standards and technological skills, develop science outreach efforts for their research, present their work at conferences, and in some cases will even publish their work in existing and (possibly) newly created junior academic journals. Teachers will hopefully be enriched too and reignited with their passion for teaching, attract new teachers to the profession, and get them excited about doing real science with their students and publishing.
Additionally, I want to develop this program so that it reaches the most diverse students and inspire them with social-justice-centered science pedagogy, culturally relevant pedagogy, and reality pedagogy so students feel empowered to take ownership of their learning and communities. They will see themselves and other communities and nations under the same stars with the humbling and inspirational nature of astronomy.
Ancient stars may have led early humans to walk upright (Melott & Thomas, 2019, click for NBC article).
Image: Adrian Lam / NBC News
Our students are explorers too. It’s time we stop beating the curiosity and wonder out of them and let them explore, wander, wonder, and embrace their curiosity and creativity.
To the stars!
To listen to an interview with the author, Dan Peluso, and the American Modeling Teachers Association (AMTA) podcast, Science Modeling Talks, where he discussed many of these ideas and this project please click here or the image above.
GoFundMe to provide eVscopes to teachers around the world!
Teachers around the world need powerful resources to motivate, inspire, and educate their students.
Now, we can unlock the wonders of the universe by providing educators with a revolutionary scientific instrument that connects their students to the cosmos, real astronomers and people around the world: the Unistellar eVscope.
Please visit the GoFundMe page to learn more and to help these teachers and their students make wonderful discoveries of the cosmos!
https://gf.me/u/y767zz
References
Bell, S. (2010). Project-based learning for the 21st century: Skills for the future. The clearing house, 83(2), 39-43.
Blumenfeld, P. C., Soloway, E., Marx, R. W., Krajcik, J. S., Guzdial, M., & Palincsar, A. (1991). Motivating project-based learning: Sustaining the doing, supporting the learning. Educational psychologist, 26(3-4), 369-398.
Cassan, A., Kubas, D., Beaulieu, J. P., Dominik, M., Horne, K., Greenhill, J., . . . Wyrzykowski, Ł. (2012). One or more bound planets per Milky Way star from microlensing observations. Nature, 481(7380), 167-169. doi:10.1038/nature10684
Collins, K. A., Collins, K. I., Pepper, J., Labadie-Bartz, J., Stassun, K. G., Gaudi, B. S., . . . Zambelli, R. (2018). The KELT Follow-up Network and Transit False-positive Catalog: Pre-vetted False Positives for TESS. The Astronomical Journal, 156(5), 1-19. doi:10.3847/1538-3881/aae582
Fortus, D., Krajcik, J., Dershimer, R. C., Marx, R. W., & Mamlok‐Naaman, R. (2005). Design‐based science and real‐world problem‐solving. International Journal of Science Education, 27(7), 855-879.
Haag, S., & Megowan, C. (2015). Next generation science standards: A national mixed‐methods study on teacher readiness. School Science and Mathematics, 115(8), 416-426.
Hall, A., & Miro, D. (2016). A Study of Student Engagement in Project-Based Learning Across Multiple Approaches to STEM Education Programs. School Science and Mathematics, 116(6), 310-319. doi:10.1111/ssm.12182
Harris, C. J., Penuel, W. R., D'Angelo, C. M., DeBarger, A. H., Gallagher, L. P., Kennedy, C. A., . . . Krajcik, J. S. (2015). Impact of project-based curriculum materials on student learning in science: Results of a randomized controlled trial. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 52(10), 1362-1385. doi:10.1002/tea.21263
Geier, R., Blumenfeld, P. C., Marx, R. W., Krajcik, J. S., Fishman, B., Soloway, E., & Clay-Chambers, J. (2008). Standardized test outcomes for students engaged in inquiry-based science curricula in the context of urban reform. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 45(8), 922-939. doi:10.1002/tea.20248
Marchis, F., Malvache, A., Marfisi, L., Borot, A., & Arbouch, E. (2020). Unistellar eVscopes: Smart, portable, and easy-to-use telescopes for exploration, interactive learning, and citizen astronomy. Acta Astronautica, 166, 23-28. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actaastro.2019.09.028
Melott, AL & Thomas, BC 2019, 'From Cosmic Explosions to Terrestrial Fires?', The Journal of Geology, vol. 127, no. 4, pp. 475-81.
Schneider, D. (2014). DIY exoplanet detector. IEEE Spectrum, 51(12), 27-28. doi:10.1109/MSPEC.2014.6964922
Sciences, N. A. o., Engineering, N. A. o., & Medicine, I. o. (2007). Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.
Sincell, M. (1999). Shadow and Shine Offer Glimpses of Otherworldly Jupiters. Science, 286(5446), 1822-1823. doi:10.1126/science.286.5446.1822
Technology, P. s. C. o. A. o. S. (2010). Prepare and Inspire: K-12 Education in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) for America's Future.
Wells, M., Hestenes, D., & Swackhamer, G. (1995). A modeling method for high school physics instruction. American Journal of Physics, 63(7), 606-619. doi:10.1119/1.17849
Zellem, R. T., Pearson, K. A., Blaser, E., Fowler, M., Ciardi, D. R., Biferno, A., . . . Malvache, A. (2020). Utilizing Small Telescopes Operated by Citizen Scientists for Transiting Exoplanet Follow-up. Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 132(1011), 054401. doi:10.1088/1538-3873/ab7ee7
Confirm Super-Jupiter Exoplanet Around KOI-375 with Your Unistellar eVscope!
Artist rendition of the young Jupiter-like exoplanet 51 Eridani b (possibly similar to the planet we expect to detect). Credit: Danielle Futselaar and Franck Marchis/SETI Institute/Gemini Planet Imager. From Scientific American article.
Dear CITIZEN SCIENTIST astronomers,
We have a very exciting exoplanet target for you to observe on Friday, June 26, 2020 (USA time zones) from sunset to sunrise in the east coast and until 2:30 am from California. This stellar target, KOI 375, is expected to have a transiting exoplanet—we call it KOI 375.01, the .01 being the first expected planet in the system. However, KOI 375.01 has not yet been confirmed and YOU can help us confirm this exciting exoplanet candidate!
Video 1: If successful, we’ll detect a planet with the transit method, which detects planets by looking for the dip in brightness of the star over time. The expected dip in the brightness of star, KOI 375, is only 0.5%!
KOI stands for “Kepler object of interest”, and KOI targets, such as KOI 375.01, were observed by the famous and successful exoplanet hunting NASA spacecraft, the Kepler space telescope. However, KOIs need to be followed-up with additional observations in order to confirm that it is in fact a planet and so we can better understand it—that’s where you come in!
The target, KOI 375, is expected to have a long-period super-Jupiter orbiting around it (KOI 375.01) with an estimated orbital period of 988.9 days (~2.7 years)! It’s long-period because it is expected to take 2.7 years to orbit its star! It’s a “super” Jupiter because previous measurements from the radial velocity (RV) method estimate a minimum mass of 4 to 5 times that of Jupiter!
With our Unistellar eVscopes, we’ll be trying to detect KOI 375.01 via the transit method (see Video1). Getting a good transit will help us to better estimate the mass as it will tell us the orbital inclination (the angle the planet’s orbit is from our perspective), which is not well known with the RV method. The transit will also tell us the size of the planet, which will allow us to calculate its density .
“Although astronomers have confirmed thousands of transiting exoplanets, fewer than 10 have orbital periods as long as KOI 375.01! Confirming this potential planet as a genuine world would add it to an exceptionally rare and small group of exoplanets”
-Paul dalba, uc riverside
A great majority of exoplanets confirmed to date have much shorter periods (see Figure 1), so if we are successful in confirming a long-period exoplanet around KOI 375 we are like cartographers adding new territory to the map of planetary discoveries in the Milky Way Galaxy! Put that on your resume or social media profile! 😉
Figure 1: Census of discovered exoplanets as of 2015. Notice the vast majority of planets are short period. From 2015 Eos article, J. Lissauer.
Exoplanet searches usually require elaborate setups, lots of study, maybe a fancy degree, and a sky mostly free of light pollution, but with new technologies, such as with the Unistellar eVscope and the citizen science network we are developing in coordination with the SETI Institute that is no longer the case!
Check out these press releases on the Unistellar Exoplanet Citizen Science Network:
Unistellar Consumer Telescope Will Help Astronomers Probe Exoplanets
(announcement)
and
Detecting Exoplanets and Asteroids: First Citizen Science Successes for Backyard Astronomy
(1st major success)
It is so amazing to me that exoplanet discovery has been done mostly through the use of expensive remote telescopes and highly technical techniques, but now, you and your eVscope can observe exoplanets with a few clicks on your smartphone and some time.
Huge thanks to exoplanetary master of ceremonies, Paul Dalba, PhD Postdoctoral Scholar at UC Riverside for suggesting and helping to organize this high scientific value target, as well as Franck Marchis and Tom Esposito at the SETI Institute!
If you are able to help us observe KOI 375.01, then check out the directions for how to do this with your eVscope below. Also, please join this special KOI 375 mission-specific SLACK channel by clicking HERE to ask questions and receive important updates related to this observation call. You can also email us at citizenscience@unistellaroptics.com.
Cheers,
Dan
Unistellar eVscope Exoplanet Observing Directions Using Occultation Mode
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD A PDF OF THE DIRECTIONS, OR VIEW THEM BELOW IN THE SCRIBD VIEWER
Important KOI 375.01 Observation Notes:
Okay Unistellar citizen astronomers, after you read the PDF directions directly above, please keep the following in mind about the observation information below.
Times below are based on general time zones (EDT, CDT, MDT, and PDT)
Everyone will be observing the transit, but not everyone will be able to observe the entirety of the transit because or our pesky Sun/atmosphere. Thus, we will combine the data from observers across the US so we can get the entire transit and achieve greatest chance of scientific success.
US east coast observers: You will see the beginning of transit, but may not be able to see the very end because of twilight right before sunrise. Observe until you can!
All other US time zone observers: You will not be able to view the very beginning of the transit since the sky will still be too bright (sun not set or twilight). The start times for CDT, MDT, and PDT are estimated based off the noted city’s “Nautical Twilight” start time (when it should be dark enough for you to use your eVscope, but note it may be a bit later).
For more exact nautical start times, visit https://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/usa.
CDT, MDT, PDT OBSERVER SUMMARY: you should plan to set up right before sunset and start observing as soon as you possibly can!
Fellow Unistellar exoplanet citizen scientist, Todd Duncan, shared this FOV (field of view) of Friday’s KOI375 target. Please reference this to make sure you have the target near center of FOV like in his example. Thanks Todd!
One science goal for my PhD is to use Unistellar eVscopes to find Baby Yoda! Hopefully Mando is nice when we find him. Lucasfilm/Walt Disney Pictures via Disney+
Detecting Exoplanets with the Unistellar eVscope
Dear CITIZEN SCIENTISTS,
I am doing my PhD in astrophysics with Franck Marchis (astronomer at the SETI Institute) and as a portion of my research I want to see if it is possible for any astronomy enthusiast around the world to coordinate with planet hunting scientists like us to help contribute to the search for planets around other stars (a.k.a. exoplanets).
Exoplanet searches usually require elaborate setups, lots of study, maybe a fancy degree, and a sky mostly free of light pollution. With new technologies, such as with the new Unistellar eVscope and the citizen science network we are developing in coordination with the SETI Institute that is no longer the case!
Check out the article, Unistellar Consumer Telescope Will Help Astronomers Probe Exoplanets.
This is amazing—if you have a Unistellar eVscope, you have the technology to detect planets orbiting other stars! Think about this–over 30 years ago planets around other stars (exoplanets) were hypothesized, but none yet were detected. Since the most agreed upon “first detection” of an exoplanet in 1992 around a pulsar, astronomers have detected thousands of exoplanets, and it is expected that the majority of all stars in the universe have exoplanets! However, exoplanet discovery has been done mostly through the use of expensive remote telescopes and highly technical techniques. Now, you and your eVscope can observe exoplanets with a few clicks on your smartphone and some time.
I’ve been posting exoplanet targets for eVscope users over at the SETI Institute’s Cosmic Diary to try and observe for the past few months. As I mentioned, this is a pilot citizen science program for exoplanet detections that I am working on for my PhD. The eVscope had already proven successful in observing an exoplanet before I started my PhD work this year, however, we have been trying to improve upon its capabilities by experimenting with new settings. My colleague, Tom Esposito, a researcher with the SETI Institute, has been helping me with this project and he was successful in the observation of TESS TOI (target of interest) 656.01, a.k.a. WASP-43b with the new settings we developed. Check it out and great job Tom!
Figure 1. Detection of exoplanet, WASP-43b (TESS TOI 656.01) with a Unistellar eVscope. Observation taken from Richmond, California by Tom Esposito on 2020 March 27. Data analysis/figure also by Tom.
Figure 1 is an example “light curve” showing an exoplanet transit detection with an eVscope! On 2020 March 27, Tom observed the star WASP-43 and detected its planet “b”, which is a gas giant with about two times the mass of Jupiter and an orbital period of only 0.8 days. The observation was made from his semi-urban back yard in Richmond, CA, US (on San Francisco Bay; Bortle class 7/8) on a clear night over the course of ~3 hours. The transit occurred between the dotted vertical lines, where the flux (i.e., brightness) of WASP-43 decreased by about 3% compared to another nearby “reference” star while the planet blocked some of the starlight. This is a solid detection but the shown light curve is still preliminary (for example, we see artificial up-and-down wiggles due to the way we are measuring the fluxes of the stars in this analysis).
Exoplanet detections like this are what your observations this weekend are for! You too can get an exoplanet light curve to detect another planet and contribute to this amazing citizen science initiative.
Check out the directions and targets below, if are able to help us observe this weekend.
Sincerely,
Dan
Unistellar eVscope Exoplanet Observing Directions Using Occultation Mode
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD A PDF OF THE DIRECTIONS, OR VIEW THEM BELOW IN THE SCRIBD VIEWER
USA Target: Best viewed from western United States, but possible in the *east.
WEDNESDAY, April 15, 2020
Exoplanet Observation Target —> WASP-183 b
*Only half of transit visible east of ~Kentucky.
Date of observation:
Wednesday, April 15, 2020
Observation Start/End Time:
8:41 pm – 12:06 am, Pacific Standard Time
IMPORTANT: PLEASE CHECK THE WEATHER so if you leave your eVscope out it is not damaged by rain/snow!!!
Target:
WASP-183
Additional details: V=12.7, Depth (ppt) = 22.6.
We hope to detect the exoplanet, WASP-183 b
Celestial Coordinates:
Right Ascension (RA) –> 10:55:09.36
Declination (Dec) –> -00:44:13.7
*Don’t forget the “-” sign for your Dec.!
Additional Target Information:
Constellation: Between Leo and Sextans
Direction: SE
Elevation at Start/Mid/End of Transit: 47°/51°/51°
eVscope Settings:
Exposure: 3950 ms
Gain: 30 db
FOV Finder Chart:
WASP-183, 2020-04-15 finder chart.The target is either at the red cross or the reticle—just be sure that general area is centered on you eVscope FOV. Note this finder chart is for what the FOV should look like at 20:40 PDT on 2020-04-15.
This is our new science goal for my PhD to use Unistellar eVscopes to find Baby Yoda! Lucasfilm/Walt Disney Pictures via Disney+
Finding a Space Station with a Backpack Telescope
Transit of the International Space Station (ISS) across the Moon on 16 November 2019 with a Unistellar eVscope. Image credit: Dan Peluso
How I observed the International Space Station (ISS) transit the Moon with a Unistellar eVscope!
Space station! Read it, hear it, or think it, and my mind is immediately transported to the scene in Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope when Obi-Wan Kenobi, Luke Skywalker, Chewbacca, and Han Solo find the Death Star and Obi-Wan says “that’s no moon, it’s a space station” (Lucas 1977). On Saturday morning, November 16, at 3:43 am PDT in Pioneer Park in Woodland, California, I saw both a space station and a moon with a robotic telescope that fits in a backpack!
Image Credit GIPHY (Lucas 1977).
Peluso with eVscope in backpack (from Nov. 11 Mercury transit event).
The International Space Station (a.k.a. the ISS) is one of the greatest technological achievements of human creation. The football field sized space station is a scientific laboratory collaborative with countries around the world researching biology and biotechnology, Earth and space science, education, human space travel, physics, and technology. It travels at 17,500 miles per hour and 240 miles above the surface of the Earth completing an orbit every 90 minutes, 16 times a day!
Although it would be nice to take the Millennium Falcon for a spin and find the space station, I’m pretty sure that Disneyland’s Galaxy’s Edge keeps their Falcon guarded by the finest of the First Order. I am still hoping on taking the Falcon for a joyride one day, but in the meantime, there are other more realistic opportunities of finding space stations.
Finding the Space Station
NASA’s website, Spot the Station, shows you how to track the ISS and even find out when you can see it fly over your location. Additionally, there are several computer and phone applications that will notify you when and where to look to see the ISS fly overhead (e.g. SkySafari). This is best observed at night with your naked eye. The ISS will appear as a fast-moving bright dot across the sky. I’ve witnessed this several times and it is always exciting, however, what I experienced from Pioneer Park was much cooler, but also seemingly much harder and rarer to observe.
There is another website to track the ISS, but it is not just for any typical kind of flyover. Sometimes, when the conditions and geometry are just right, an observer can catch the ISS transiting across the Moon or Sun! FYI, a transit is when a smaller object passes in front of a larger object from an observer’s point of view. Bartosz Wojczyński’s site, ISS Transit Finder, allows you to input any Earthly coordinates to find out when and where the closest ISS transit to your location occurs across the Moon or Sun.
The Unistellar eVscope
As a part of my PhD research, I’ve recently acquired a new type of robotic telescope, the Unistellar eVscope. The eVscope is an autonomous 4.5” Newtonian-like telescope controlled via a dedicated smartphone application that fits in a backpack. It uses a CMOS light detection sensor, onboard computer, and its proprietary Enhanced Vision technology to capture more light than your average amateur optical telescope. One of my advisors, Franck Marchis, astronomer at the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute, encouraged me to try and capture the ISS transiting the Moon to test its capabilities and I was successful!
Peluso setting up eVscope for ISS Moon transit.
Unistellar eVscope aimed at Moon for ISS transit.
Planning my ISS Moon Transit Observation
To plan the ISS observation, I used Wojczyńsky’s ISS Transit Finder site and discovered that the ISS was set to transit a waning gibbous Moon near Sacramento, California at 3:43:14 am PDT on Saturday, 16 November 2019. Viewing the ISS transit the Moon is similar to viewing a total solar eclipse in that you need to be in a special narrow band of area in order to observe it.
ISS Transit Finder visibility path of 16 Nov. 2019 ISS Moon transit in northern California.
Details of observed ISS Moon transit event.
Officers Ted and Dalbinder of the Woodland Police Department visiting Peluso and learning about the ISS and transits.
After researching locations in the visibility path, I discovered that the transit would be visible from Pioneer Park in Woodland, California. Since the time of the event was after the closing hours of the park, I contacted the City of Woodland’s Parks Supervisor to get permission to be there afterhours. Westley and the Community Services Department graciously gave me permission, as well as contacted the Woodland Police Department to inform them that I was allowed to use the park for my observation. Officers Ted and Dalbinder even stopped by briefly during my observation to say hi and look through the eVscope.
Location of Peluso’s eVscope in Pioneer Park, Woodland, California.
MUSE’s Simulation Theory and Capturing the ISS Moon Transit
I generally like to plan my observations with some good music to play in my wireless headset, so I downloaded an album from one of my favorite bands—the sci-fi 80s inspired Simulation Theory by MUSE. With my telescope set up in the north west area of the park, I used the eVscope’s software application to find and track the Moon while also enjoying the perfect synth accompanied soundtrack from MUSE while I waited anxiously for the predicted transit at 3:43:14 am.
The Unistellar app not only controls the telescope, but also provides live views and allows one to download images from an observation. The ISS transit was predicted to only last 0.56 seconds so in order to not miss the event, I decided to use my iPhone’s native screen recording tool, Screen Recording, which is found in the iPhone’s Control Center.
About two minutes before the predicted transit time, I pressed record on my iPhone and crossed my fingers that I would catch the transit. Just as predicted and shortly after my clock turned to 3:43 am, I saw a small shadow speed across the disk of the Moon! “Wow!”, I said to myself. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I got it! After I let my phone record the live event for a bit more time, I stopped the recording and opened the saved video from my photo roll to check that what I had just witnessed wasn’t my imagination playing tricks on me.
Simulation Theory by MUSE. See Spotify embedded player below to check it out!
Peluso checking the ISS Moon Transit with the Unistellar eVscope App Screen Recorder video.
Out of the Gloom, a MUSE Inspired ISS Transit Video
After successfully capturing the ISS Moon transit with the eVscope, I wanted to make a simple, dramatic, and artistic video of the event. I knew the music of MUSE would be a perfect soundtrack to this cosmic event and their digital team very graciously gave me permission to use their song, The Void, in the video. I used the raw iPhone screen recording of the eVscope Unistellar app in Adobe Premiere Pro to make my video. MUSE retweeted a post of mine on Twitter with the uploaded video to their followers around the world and it was very well received!
My Future Plans for the eVscope
Next, I plan to take my eVscope on a quest to observe other transits, such as those of planets orbiting other star systems to help contribute to the SETI Institute’s search for life in our universe. We live in a new age of science and astronomy where technology is allowing us to make science fiction a reality—e.g. a backpack-sized robotic telescope controlled with a pocket-sized touchscreen computer that can find space stations and deep space objects.
With any good science fiction film, you need to have some great music for your soundtrack. Thank you to MUSE for providing this sci-fi story such a brilliant soundtrack!
“They’ll say, no one will find us
That we’re estranged and all alone
They believe nothing can reach us
And pull us out of the boundless gloom
They’re wrong”
The Void by Muse
(Bellamy 2018)
Close up of the ISS transiting the Moon captured by Peluso.
Sources
Bellamy, M. J. (2018). The Void. On Simulation Theory. Warner Chappell Music, Inc.
Lucas, G. (Director). (1977). Star Wars. G. Kurtz (Producer). United States 20th Century Fox.
Marchis, F., Arbouch, E., Bertin, E., Harman, P., Malvache, A., Veres, P., & Zellem, R. T. (2019). Citizen Science Astronomy with the Unistellar Network: From Planetary Defence to Exoplanet Transits. Paper presented at the EPSC-DPS Joint Meeting 2019, Geneva, Switzerland https://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EPSC-DPS2019/EPSC-DPS2019-898-5.pdf
Marchis, F., Malvache, A., Marfisi, L., Borot, A., & Arbouch, E. (2020). Unistellar eVscopes: Smart, portable, and easy-to-use telescopes for exploration, interactive learning, and citizen astronomy. Acta Astronautica, 166, 23-28. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actaastro.2019.09.028
NASA International Space Station. Retrieved from https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html
Reference Guide to the INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION. (2015). In N. A. a. S. Administration (Ed.), (Utilization Edition ed.). nasa.gov. <https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/np-2015-05-022-jsc-iss-guide-2015-update-111015-508c.pdf>.
Unistellar 2019, Unistellar. Viewed 22 November 2019 <https://unistellaroptics.com/>.
Blackout Lights Out in California? Time to look at the positive and up at the cosmos!
(c) Thierry Cohen, San Francisco 37° 48’ 30’’ N 2010-10-09 Lst 20:58, courtesy Danziger Gallery, New York and the artist.
Doom and gloom, the end of the world and all that stuff we like to click on.
Time Magazine, New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, CNN, and many major news sources are reporting on California’s current blackout initiated by PG&E (Pacific Gas & Electric Co.) to help prevent another major California wildfire. I live in the Bay Area, but am fortunately not affected by the blackouts in my location (at least not yet).
Some reports say that 600,000 have lost their power as of Thursday, October 10, and that another 250,000 are expected to lose power over the next several days (Fuller 2019). Losing electricity is no doubt a horrible nightmare for anyone in our modern society–you can’t watch Netflix, play video games, watch television, charge your phone for more Fortnite or Candy Crush, microwave a burrito, etc. Doom and gloom. Cats and dogs raining from the sky. Mass hysteria.
On a more serious note, there are concerns worth noting, including having no heat or air, security system failure, spoiled food, no gas for carbon vehicles, loss of business, no lights, school closures, looting, crime, and for some, life threatening situations since they have severe medical conditions that are treated by electrically powered devices. Losing electricity is not only bad for superficial reasons, but also for some very serious ones as well.
Is there any positive in all of this?
News organizations like to only display headlines of fear and destruction because it sells papers and digital clicks (i.e. clickbait). Where’s the uplifting positive, or encouraging news located? Additionally, a lot of people are complaining. I’ve seen social media posts saying how evil PG&E is and although I don’t completely disagree about the state of PG&E’s morality, I do think we need to try to start seeing the positive in things and see the forest through the trees.
Maybe we’re somewhat trained to damn the darkness instead of lighting a candle because of how our corporate media system has set up our society, or maybe each one of us has hope deep inside and we’re just waiting for someone to turn off the darkness to allow that hope to shine and move us to see the positive. I think it’s the latter.
Besides the fact that a blackout could help people disconnect and you know talk and look at each other instead of small devices in their hands, it also may actually prevent some major wildfires, and this could also be a golden opportunity for you to look back up at and into our roots–i.e. the cosmos!
In the dark and blind.
In 1994, there was a massive blackout in the city of Los Angeles that left much of the city without light and residents began to call 911 to report a strange glowing gas in the sky (Buck 2017). End times? No. They were seeing the beautiful gases of our own Milky Way galaxy for the first time.
Thierry Cohen completed a beautiful photography series, called Darkened Cities, in which he replaced the skies over light polluted cities with what the sky would look like if it weren’t for the light pollution. The image of San Francisco at the beginning of this post comes from this series. Please consider taking some time to check out the rest of his series on his website and to think about what your skies would be like without light pollution. You can also view his work on his Instagram account @thierrycohenphotography.
Fabio Falchi at the Light Pollution Science and Technology Institute in Thiene, Italy and his team of researchers concluded in a 2016 study that more than 83% of the entire world’s population live in light polluted skies (Light Pollution Atlas Shows Why 80 Percent of North Americans Can’t See the Milky Way 2016), and therefore cannot fully access the cosmos. Additionally, over one-third of humanity and 80% of North America cannot even view the beauty of the Milky Way galaxy (Falchi et al. 2016), our home. We’re blind to the backyard of our own home!
North America’s artificial sky brightness (Falchi et al. 2016).
Time to look at the positive and up at the cosmos!
I may be biased (I’m an astronomer), but I think we should have an international dark sky holiday where all of the world turns off its lights to save energy and peel the veil off from our night sky to reveal the splendor of our cosmos, which is currently being hidden from us. Organizations, such as the International Dark Sky Association, are actively working on creating opportunities to give back the sky to us, and save our communities lots of energy and money in the process. Additionally, innovative companies, such as Unistellar and its eVscope, are creating a new breed of robotic consumer telescopes controlled via smartphone applications that have the power to rip through our light pollution, and give back our stolen night sky.
I know this PG&E thing is a setback for many of us and is causing a lot of problems. However, if you’re in the affected area, maybe it will help ease the pain and struggle a bit to go outside and look up at the beautiful stars from which we came. In blackout areas, it is unlikely to be dark enough anywhere near the city of San Francisco to actually see the Milky Way during this current blackout, but it’s worth a try, and it should be better than most nights (i.e. you’ll see more stars).
At the very least, if you go out tonight and look up and don’t see the Milky Way–whether you’re in a blackout area or not–if you just look up anyways, then you can get back some lost wonder, hope, and be inspired for a better future. You can also then be encouraged to see the Milky Way in your future by planning a trip to a dark sky location, or by helping to implement a dark sky holiday in your community and beyond.
We can also see the forest through the trees and know that by looking up that we are learning that all setbacks are not all doom and gloom, but learning opportunities for a better and brighter tomorrow, even if there are no lights.
NASA APOD 2016 May 15. Milky Way Over Quiver Tree Forest. Image Credit & Copyright: Florian Breuer
References
Buck, S 2017, During a 1994 blackout, L.A. residents called 911 when they saw the Milky Way for the first time, TIMELINE, viewed 10 September 2019 <https://timeline.com/los-angeles-light-pollution-ebd60d5acd43>.
Cohen, Thierry. Darkened Cities. San Francisco 37° 48’ 30’’ N 2010-10-09 Lst 20:58 <https://thierrycohen.com/pages/work/starlights.html>
Falchi, F, Cinzano, P, Duriscoe, D, Kyba, CCM, Elvidge, CD, Baugh, K, Portnov, BA, Rybnikova, NA & Furgoni, R 2016, ‘The new world atlas of artificial night sky brightness’, Science Advances, vol. 2, no. 6, p. e1600377.
Fuller, T 2019, Californians Confront a Blackout Induced to Prevent Blazes, The New York Times viewed 10 October 2019 <https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/10/us/pge-outage.html>.
Light Pollution Atlas Shows Why 80 Percent of North Americans Can’t See the Milky Way, 2016, MIT Technolgy Review viewed 10 October 2019 <https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602364/light-pollution-atlas-shows-why-80-percent-of-north-americans-cant-see-the-milky-way/>.
Drake Equation Mural in a High School Physics Class
Drake Equation Mural at MIT Academy in Vallejo, CA by Mr. Peluso's 10th grade physics class. Fall 2019. Image credit: D. Peluso
The Attention-Grabbing Intro
How well do you remember your first high school physics class? The only thing I recall was dropping an egg off of some bleachers and trying to make a device that protected that egg so that it would not crack. I also remember that there was some math involved and I think I might not have been too happy about that. Other than those memories, I cannot remember anything from that class! Sorry, Mr. Hanlon!
Science was not my favorite subject in high school. In fact, it wasn’t until my late 20s that I fell in love with science and changed careers. Before that I couldn’t have cared less about it, but that’s another story. This story is about how I molded art, research, dimensional analysis, and SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) into an engaging project in a high school physics class.
I’m not a big fan of the traditional because tradition hasn’t done me any good in life and definitely didn’t do me any good in high school. Therefore, I feel called to create experiences for my students that they will remember—experiences that would have excited me as a teenager. I feel that these experiences should not just teach them something, but also do the following:
inspire them
make them think about the universe differently
teach them how, not what, to think
encourage them to wonder about the unknown
create a desire to answer the deepest questions
imagine the impossible.
Inspiration for the Project and the Drake Equation
The inspiration for this project came last summer during my first visit to the SETI Institute in Mountain View, CA to meet with my new PhD advisor, Franck Marchis. During this visit, I was drawn to the Drake equation artwork in the lobby’s entrance. I first learned about the Drake equation years ago when I went back to school for science and was immediately fascinated by the idea of SETI and the idea of looking for life elsewhere in the cosmos.
The Drake equation, created by Frank Drake, former director of the Carl Sagan Center at the SETI Institute, is not an equation in the traditional sense, but a way of organizing the focus of SETI researchers seeking an answer to N, which is the possible number of civilizations in our galaxy that could have detectable communication. There are seven factors in the equation that, when multiplied together, yield a probable answer for N. That value varies greatly depending on which researchers you talk to.
Drake equation: N = R* fp ne fl fi fc L
The Idea
I wanted to begin this school year with a fun and engaging project that would also allow me to get to know my students and build a strong community for the year. The idea that I initially had after my visit to the SETI Institute was to have all my students paint a mural of the Drake equation on the exterior wall of my tenth-grade high school physics class at the MIT Academy in Vallejo, CA.
I discussed this idea with another science teacher at my school, Michael Wee, and he suggested I consider having them paint on separate wooden boards to make the mechanics of the whole project simpler, and also mobile. It turns out that the number of groups I have in each of my five physics classes equals the total number of letters in the Drake equation (eight) so I could have each group focus on one letter. Perfect!
Wee’s idea also made the project more interesting because it meant that I would have five different groups across each section working on the same board for each letter at different times. I believe obstacles should be turned into opportunities and this was a perfect one for some major creativity!
The Mechanics of my Drake Equation Mural Project
Teachers, this is your lesson plan if you want to try it out!
Here’s a rough outline of the project:
Have each group draw from a hat to select their Drake equation letter
Individuals in each group conduct independent research on the equation and their group’s letter
Individuals in each group share their research within their group
Groups brainstorm on their design using whiteboards
Groups communicate with other groups with the same letter from other sections to share ideas and attempt to agree on a design
Each group from each section paints their ideas on their letter’s board
Each group presents their board to their class and shares what they learned and how they connected with other group’s designs
Hang boards on outside of physics classroom
Learn about dimensional analysis and have each student use the Drake equation to come up with their own estimate for N (my class is currently in this step)
For step two above, I had students work individually to research the Drake equation as opposed to me attempting to tell them about it. I’m trying to make it a habit to have the students construct their own knowledge versus me trying to give it to them because I find that works much better!
For their research, I had students compile their research in Google slide presentations with the following:
One slide with several bullet points on their research about the Drake equation as a whole. E.g. what is it, what does it do, why is it important?
A second slide with research specific to their group’s letter (N, R*, fp, ne, fl, fi, fc, or L). Student groups with N would double up on research on the whole equation and try to give a more thorough and broad overview of what the Drake equation is.
At least two additional slides, each with a collage of pictures found on the Internet to help inspire ideas for brainstorming
One final slide with references
Wait, something cool happened in the middle of their research time!
Franck suggested that we try to get some SETI researchers to have a live videoconference with my classes to talk about how their work contributes to the Drake equation. The response from the SETI Institute was fantastic and we were able to get one SETI researcher to videoconference with each of my sections!
We used Zoom to have the following researchers videoconference with my physics classes: Pascal Lee, Franck Marchis, Douglas Caldwell, Margaret Race, and Dana Backman. This was very exciting for both me and my students. Many of my students told me that they had never experienced this, i.e. having a professional scientist videoconference their class.
The researchers were instructed to introduce themselves, talk broadly about what the Drake equation is, discuss how their work contributes to the equation, and then hold a Q&A with the students. The students were instructed to take notes and each group had to have one question prepared beforehand. Students were allowed to use these notes in their research slides.
Sharing research and art in a physics class?!
After the research was complete, each student shared their research slides on their Chromebooks using the round-robin teaching strategy. Next, they used whiteboards to brainstorm their designs and took pictures of their ideas to share with other sections via online collaboration tool, Padlet.
Students were told that the goal of each group’s design was to include what they had learned in their research, and to earn higher scores they needed to find a creative way to have their design connect with what other groups were designing. This type of non-linear thinking is exactly what makes the “A” in STEAM so important.
STEAM may be the substance rising under the collars of traditional educators reading this blog post, but it is also a progressive new initiative in science education. STEAM is the rebranded science education buzzword of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), but with the addition of an “A” for the arts. So what place do the arts have in a physics class, or any science class for that matter?
Robert Root-Burnstein studied Nobel Prize winning scientific “geniuses” between the years 1902 and 2005 and found that they were proficient not only in the sciences, but also in the arts (Land 2013)! There has also been research suggesting that art can actually improve students’ ability to remember science concepts (Hardiman et al. 2019).
Research aside, I have personally seen positive results from using art in my classroom. Students engaged in this project not only had to paint a mural of each letter involved with the Drake equation, but also had to research the equation and their letter in depth, incorporating their learnings into their design.
I believe the very act of painting something you learned about creates a deeper and more intimate learning experience for a student. This can be seen by looking at the finished product, but was also achieved when I heard some of the presentations and realized that these students were talking more intelligently about the Drake equation than I or other professionals could!
The Results
The energy generated by students creating these boards was like nothing I had ever experienced in my classroom. Students were engaged and working in teams and across teams. They were running around the room mixing paint, checking in with what other groups were doing, having discussions with me and each other about the Drake equation, and most importantly they were having fun!
Here are the boards!
Drake Equation Mural Video Walkthrough.
Next steps and concluding thoughts
I ended up calling the unit that did this project Creativity in Science. Besides the Drake equation mural project, we also discussed why creativity in science is important—e.g. how Einstein’s creative way of thinking about space and time revolutionized physics, how Richard Feynman developed his Nobel Prize-winning idea of quantum dynamics after looking at a spinning plate during lunch in a cafeteria at Cornell, or how NASA engineers used creativity to save the lives of the Apollo 13 astronauts by “fitting a square scrubber into a round hole.”
In addition to these discussions and others on neuroscience and a growth mindset, we also had a lot of fun discussing the idea of finding aliens and painting a class mural. In our current unit, Science, Skepticism, and Measurement, students are learning dimensional-analysis skills and will soon apply them to develop their very own estimates for the Drake equation.
The mural will live on the outside of my physics classroom for the rest of this academic year as a stamp of the community we built inside. That stamp includes creative ideas and expression, cultural backgrounds, questions about the universe, imagination, and wonder. We will return to the Drake equation again in unit The Universe Lab: Electromagnetic Waves, when I hope to have my students use some remote telescopes to conduct their own search for communicating civilizations in our galaxy.
Maybe my students and I will solve the Drake equation. Maybe we’ll contribute to it in some way. We’re unlikely to contribute any meaningful data, but maybe later one, or a few, of my students will be among the first to make one of the most important discoveries in history—finding an answer to the question of whether or not we are alone in the cosmos.
Maybe, instead of dropping eggs the way I did when I was their age, another few will look up at a star at night later in life and remember this project and think about the possibility of life around one of those stars. Maybe this inspiration will influence them to write a hit song, a blockbuster movie, or solve world conflict because, hey we’ll all on this pale blue dot together.
Regardless of what happens in the future, we tried something new, had some fun, learned about some interesting concepts, got to talk with some of the top scientists at the renowned SETI Institute, learned how to use an equation with more variables than any other physics class usually has, and did all that while making some really cool-looking art!
I’m very proud of what my students accomplished in this project and I’m proud of myself for taking the risk of trying something new. Please take risks too. There are so many great ideas in your head, if you just let them out and share the galaxy will be a better place for us all, even if we’re the only ones in it.
NGC 7331. Image courtesy of NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.
References:
Cox, J How to Use the Round Robin Discussion Teaching Strategies, TeachHUB.com, viewed 15 September 2019, <https://www.teachhub.com/how-use-round-robin-discussion-teaching-strategies>.
Drake Equation SETI Institute viewed 15 September 2019, <https://www.seti.org/drake-equation-index>.
Hardiman, MM, JohnBull, RM, Carran, DT & Shelton, A 2019, ‘The effects of arts-integrated instruction on memory for science content’, Trends in Neuroscience and Education, vol. 14, pp. 25-32.
Land, MH 2013, ‘Full STEAM Ahead: The Benefits of Integrating the Arts Into STEM’, Procedia Computer Science, vol. 20, pp. 547-52.
Madden, ME, Baxter, M, Beauchamp, H, Bouchard, K, Habermas, D, Huff, M, Ladd, B, Pearon, J & Plague, G 2013, ‘Rethinking STEM Education: An Interdisciplinary STEAM Curriculum’, Procedia Computer Science, vol. 20, pp. 541-6.
Stevens, AP 2019, Art can make science easier to remember, Science News for Students, viewed 15 September 2019 <https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/art-can-make-science-easier-remember>.
Tillman, J Creative Connections STAMPS School of Art & Design viewed 15 September 2019 <https://stamps.umich.edu/creative-work/stories/creative-connections>.
Accepted! USQ Astrophysics PhD Program
Exciting news—I have been accepted into a PhD program in astrophysics! I will be exploring and applying new techniques to discover and characterize exoplanets, as well as change how science and astronomy education is implemented across the planet. The journey to become Dr. Peluso begins! Read more about what I’ll be doing in the About or Science page of my site.
My vision for science education and plans to change the world!
My goal, sitting here now, and for the remainder of my time on this speck of dust, is to do everything possible to progress our species into a more positive, peaceful, and spectacular future. A future that can only now be realized in our most fantastic dreams; full of new discoveries, new technology, human settlements in various sectors of our solar system, longer life spans, the end of poverty, better education for women, social and economic equality, the end of war against ourselves, a cure for cancer and other future deadly diseases, and a new global cultural abandonment of the ideas of borders—a purely human construct (there are no borders when looking at the Earth from space)—where all humans are citizens of the planet Earth. As an educator, I have an amazing opportunity to instill this idea of progress within the minds of the upcoming generations that will inhabit this planet. I hope to inspire my students, and everyone in my life, with a curiosity and wonder of the universe, an urgency and need to be skeptical of everything and everyone (especially those in powerful positions), and to be encouraged and uplifted to pursue their dreams.
From Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, Episode 12, The World Set Free (2014, FOX)
I do not believe that educators should be asking our students to memorize facts and participate in an information dump led by us with a fact bucket at the front of our classrooms that is seemingly dumped into the heads of unwanting students. I do not believe that we should be teaching students how to fill in bubbles, but rather how to break outside the boundaries of their bubbles, literally and figuratively. The innate ability to problem solve, to be natural scientists, to probe the universe with a level of curiosity that has led past explorers to risk death for the sake of discovery is inherent in our DNA, and one of humanity’s most impressive traits. This ability should be encouraged. It has brought us out from the caves and into the stars and even onto other worlds. Our artificial boot prints have left a trace fossil on another world, the moon, that will likely last for billions of years and signifies a new geologic age unknown to this planet for 4.5 billion years, the Anthropocene.
Please check out this amazing article by Dr. David Grinspoon on this:
The Golden Spike of Tranquility Base
Currently, in our society, and in our American education system, the amazing abilities of our species that have led us to our current level of knowledge and technology is most certainly not encouraged. Rote memorization, institutional disciplines, and the discouragement of skepticism is more commonplace.
Wonder, inspiration, curiosity, drive, passion, and tenacious actions are what make the most astounding inventions, scientific theories, discoveries, art, literature, technological advancements . . .
Teaching chemistry without telling students that most of the natural elements of the periodic table were formed in the crucibles of stars and stellar supernovas, and that they, and all life, are products of these events and are composed of ‘star stuff’, is withholding scientific truths that inspire curiosity, wonder, and spirit.
Teaching a biology course without communicating that the DNA in your cells connects us with all life on this planet in a profound way, and that there is a current field, astrobiology, which allows scientists to search and theorize about the possibility of life elsewhere in the cosmos is robbing students of a possible spark to drive them into a career of making the first extraterrestrial life discovery.
Teaching physics without diving into the current theories about a multiverse, string theory, or that the same force of gravity that students learn when taught forces can rip into space time to create a singularity where the physics they're being taught no longer functions, and time as we know it stops, is stripping away some of the most fascinating parts of this field, which may inspire them to take college-level physics, or just try a little harder in the class because it’s cool and interesting.
Teaching geoscience without telling students that the same geology they learn on Earth can be applied to other planets and lead to a career in planetary science and possibly a spot on a team that sends the next space probe or rover to Mars, Europa, or another solar system object, is leaving out a fundamental aspect of a field that is often overlooked and that might encourage further interest or careers.
There are many other examples, but the point here is this: to create interest, real-world applications, inspire, and show the students why they are learning what they are learning, and to make them want to learn it. In order to do this, educators must look past the state standards and basic needs of the curriculum set forth by their school districts and fill in the spaces and in between lines with the colorful truths that inspire young and old minds alike. Why should science, or any subject, be boring? It doesn’t, so why do we make it so! Educators have to give purpose!
Skepticism is one of the most fundamental aspects, if not the fundamental aspect, of science. The body of knowledge we now call science is nothing, and would have never have become what it is today, if it were not for the self-correcting machinery of the scientific method. Science is a way of thinking. It is a way of looking at the universe and any claims by sentient beings with a fine tooth comb of skepticism. The peer-review process, empirical evidence for claims, falsifiable theories, and the humility to throw out or revise our most precious theories if new confirmed evidence disproves or improves them is what has made our greatest scientific achievements and knowledge what it is today. This way of thinking also properly trains future citizens of an informed democracy and protects us from tyrannical takeovers, charlatans, and other authoritarian thought-police-type hell-bent on hypnotizing the masses. Carl Sagan said in his novel, The Demon-Haunted World (Sagan, 1996, p. 434):
“If we can’t think for ourselves, if we’re unwilling to question authority, then we’re just putty in the hands of those in power. But if the citizens are educated and form their own opinions, then those in power work for us.”
Please check out the official and full video from the Charlie Rose interview on 20 Dec. 1996: https://charlierose.com/videos/2625
My students will have wonder and be inspired by science. They will learn skepticism and the scientific method. And, they will embrace evidence. I believe a perfect example of a great scientist is one who is fueled by wonder and discovery, skeptical of claims by others and of him/herself, but fully prepared and willing to embrace the evidence. An open mind, prepared to accept that “the universe is under no obligation to make any sense to [you]” (Neil deGrasse Tyson, Real Time with Bill Maher, 2016), is also of paramount importance. The curriculum developed by educators absolutely needs to include the wonders mentioned above, and more.
Depending on where I get a job I may have to get creative on how I will fill my lessons with teaching students skepticism filled with wonder into the curriculum, but trust me, I will. I will fight. I will not give up. I have finally found my purpose in life. In my instruction, I will present with mystery and drama and the students will also have time to construct their own knowledge, participate in labs, group activities, field trips, and even research. It is also important that I remain passionate about what I teach and therefore must only teach what I am passionate about. The best teachers are those who are passionate and knowledgeable in their subject area.
I, Daniel Peluso, plan to change the world and I believe that I can.
How about you?
References:
Big Think. (8 June 2011). Neil deGrasse Tyson on Teaching Science. [Video File]. Retrieved from YouTube at https://youtu.be/tsNrIfDTyWA
Druyan, A., & Soter, S. (Writers), & Braga, B., Pope, B., & Druyan, A. (Directors). (1 June 2014). The World Set Free [Television series episode]. In Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey. Fox.
express55589 (YouTube channel upload). (uploaded 26 March 2014). Neil deGrasse Tyson - Schools are failures. [Video File]. Retrieved from YouTube at https://youtu.be/jZzckOX06N0
NOVA's Secret Life of Scientists and Engineers. (6 March 2014). Bill Nye: Change The World. [Video File]. Retrieved from YouTube at https://youtu.be/1KkKejZnazw
Real Time with Bill Maher. (June 3, 2016). HBO. Hollywood, CA.
Sagan, Carl. (1996). The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. New York, NY: The Random House Publishing Group.
strobe5000 (YouTube channel upload). (uploaded 8 Oct. 2011). Carl Sagan and Government. [Video File]. (Video originally from an interview with Charlie Rose on 20 December 1996). Retrieved from YouTube at https://youtu.be/_iyFw8UF85A