Introduction
You are working for a popular middle school astronomy magazine. The magazines readers are very interested in doing asteroid hunting. Your task is to write a set of about 6 articles that guides your readers through the process.
In order for you to be able to write these technical articles you have to do some practical asteroid hunting yourself.
The Task
To develop a set of articles that middle school students can work through to enable them to do asteroid hunting - successfully.
Please note: The object of this exercise is to teach the method used for asteroid hunting, not to really search for asteroids.
Therefore, you should look up the positions of some known brighter asteroids that you want your magazine readers to search for first. (You will tell them this in the articles too. During the first few articles they are just developing the correct method to use.)
During these exercises, they will take photographs of a relatively 'large' area of the sky so that some searching is required.
Asteroids should not be found in the center of all their photographs!
Based on your practical experience you must decide how large an area of the sky these students must search for asteroids.
They could search 5 to 10 areas (with only 50% of these areas actually having relatively easy to find asteroids).
The Process and Resources
Phase 1 - Do asteroid hunting yourself
Hunting for Asteroids From Your Backyard
Phase 2 - Research asteroid hunting methods
The Minor Planet Center (MPC) operates at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory G: asteroids hunting ccd
Phase 3 - Write 6 asteroid hunting articles
Based on your research, you have to decide on the topic of each of your six articles for this astronomy magazine.
Some suggestions:
Article 1 - Overview of asteroids
Article 2 - How professional astronomers look for asteroids
Article 3 - Amateur astronomer asteroid hunting techniques
Etc.
Alternatively, all 6 your articles may focus on asteroid hunting techniques. (Assume your readers know about asteroids in general).
Phase 4 - Give these articles for your middle school science teacher try out practially with his/her students
Phase 5 - Find some astronomy clubs on the Internet that might want to put your articles on their website
Go to WebQuest: Standards addressed / Conclusion / Evaluation
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