WP5 – SA3

Service activities for higher education and outreach

INAF – CDS – ESO – ARI Heidelberg

G. Iafrate, M. Ramella, R. Smareglia (INAF)

T. Boch, F. Bonnarel, C. Capoulun, P. Fernique (CDS)

F. Chéreau (ESO)

F. Freistetter (ARI Heidelberg)

WP 5 - Service activities for higher education and outreach EuroVO-AIDA – First periodic review – 24 April 2009

Massimo Ramella, WPMTL, INAF

Outline

• Objectives (project plan D2.1)

• Deliverable D5.1 (May 2008)

• From D5.1 to D5.2

• Deliverable D5.2 (April 2009)

• Work in progress

WP 5 - Service activities for higher education and outreach EuroVO-AIDA – First periodic review – 24 April 2009

Massimo Ramella, WPTL, INAF

Objectives

• Provide tools for access to VO data for higher education students, for middle school teachers and students, and for amateur astronomers

• Provide some basic information on the main classes of objects available to our public within the Euro VO database.

• Contact various international projects for the diffusion of astronomy in order to merge (part of) their knowledge base with our outreach interfaces

WP 5 - Service activities for higher education and outreach EuroVO-AIDA – First periodic review – 24 April 2009

Massimo Ramella, WPTL, INAF

Deliverable D5.1 • Basic requirements for outreach VO tools in agreement with objectives:

–compatibility with Virtual Observatory standards–presence of an adequate sky-navigation tool–reduce number of significant image and catalog sources –selection of astronomical objects by class –simplified search options–careful choice of buttons –access to PR images of special objects–high level commands in script language–easy printing and printer-friendly pages–(partial) off-line functionality–use of local images and catalogs–capability to operate with less then optimal resources–high level documentation: reference guide and user-friendly tutorial–simplified documentation: primers and use cases

WP 5 - Service activities for higher education and outreach EuroVO-AIDA – First periodic review – 24 April 2009

Massimo Ramella, WPTL, INAF

Deliverable D5.1

• Choice of tools for implementing and testing outreach requirements :

• Aladin (CDS)

• Stellarium (ESO)

• Stellarium/VirGO (ESO)

WP 5 - Service activities for higher education and outreach EuroVO-AIDA – First periodic review – 24 April 2009

Massimo Ramella, WPTL, INAF

From D5.1 to D5.2

• Design use cases including astronomical information

• Test simplified tools in schools and with amateur astronomers

• Agreement with schools for systematic recording of feedback

• Acknowledge efforts sustained by testers

• Modify / correct tools according to feedback

WP 5 - Service activities for higher education and outreach EuroVO-AIDA – First periodic review – 24 April 2009

Massimo Ramella, WPTL, INAF

From D5.1 to D5.2

• Use cases:

– the sky (celestial sphere, constellations, light pollution)

– the stars (stellar observables, H.-R. diagram)

– the Pleyades (stellar parallaxes, stellar evolution, H.-R. diagram)

– the Barnard’s star (proper motions)

– confirmation of a candidate Supernova (astrometry, SN searches)

– the Hubble diagram and galaxy morphologies (galaxies)

– distance to the Andromeda galaxy (galaxies, variable stars, distances)

WP 5 - Service activities for higher education and outreach EuroVO-AIDA – First periodic review – 24 April 2009

Massimo Ramella, WPTL, INAF

From D5.1 to D5.2

• Test simplified software tools in schools:

4 months in 7 schools in north-eastern Italy

~ 250 students (13 and 17 years old)

~ 110 hours of classroom support (astronomy, VO, technical)

~ 150 feedback forms

WP 5 - Service activities for higher education and outreach EuroVO-AIDA – First periodic review – 24 April 2009

Massimo Ramella, WPTL, INAF

From D5.1 to D5.2

• A few notes from our experience with testers:–Kids pose rather high demands on the performances of software tools and are

used to expect easy collection of resources from many databases. For them the VO

is an “obvious” project.

–Kids learned to use tools far more quickly than we had planned

–No teachers and only few experienced and motivated amateur astronomers knew

of Aladin and Stellarium

–Most interested kids/teachers/amateurs had already seen HST PR images

–In most instances the availability of a translation in mother language has been an

essential feature to trigger the use of our tools

WP 5 - Service activities for higher education and outreach EuroVO-AIDA – First periodic review – 24 April 2009

Massimo Ramella, WPTL, INAF

Deliverable D5.2

• Aladin (CDS) Beta Version 5.915

– Important new features:

• Sky Browser

• simplified choice of data and catalogs

• access to Hubble Space Telescope Press Release images

• available languages: English, French, German, Italian

WP 5 - Service activities for higher education and outreach EuroVO-AIDA – First periodic review – 24 April 2009

Massimo Ramella, WPTL, INAF

Deliverable D5.2

• Stellarium v.0.10.2 / VirGO v. 1.4.3

– Important new features:

• new GUI based on Qt 4.5

• faster recoded Digital Sky Survey background w/ multiresolution jpeg

• data of bright stars, sidereal time, and observer’s coordinate system

• available languages: English, French, German, Italian, Spanish

WP 5 - Service activities for higher education and outreach EuroVO-AIDA – First periodic review – 24 April 2009

Massimo Ramella, WPTL, INAF

Deliverable D5.2 • SimPlay (CDS) – NEW, a product of WP8

WP 5 - Service activities for higher education and outreach EuroVO-AIDA – First periodic review – 24 April 2009

Massimo Ramella, WPTL, INAF

Deliverable D5.2

• Use cases

• Leaflet with the presentation of AIDA-WP5 activities for the public

• Poster with the celestial sphere (based on Stellarium)

• Constantly updated TWiki pages on AIDA Web

– download of the latest versions of software and documentation

– bookkeeping.

WP 5 - Service activities for higher education and outreach EuroVO-AIDA – First periodic review – 24 April 2009

Massimo Ramella, WPTL, INAF

Implementation of Basic Requirements

–compatibility with Virtual Observatory standards–presence of an adequate sky-navigation tool–reduce number of significant image and catalog sources –selection of astronomical objects by class (work in progress)–simplified search options (partially done)–careful choice of buttons –access to PR images of special objects–high level commands in script language (abandoned after negative feed-back)–easy printing and printer-friendly pages–(partial) off-line functionality–use of local images and catalogs–capability to operate with less then optimal resources–high level documentation: reference guide and user-friendly tutorial–simplified documentation: primers and use cases

WP 5 - Service activities for higher education and outreach EuroVO-AIDA – First periodic review – 24 April 2009

Massimo Ramella, WPTL, INAF

Work in progress

• selection of astronomical objects by classes

• communications between AIDA tools and Google Sky / MS

WWT

• develop initial contacts with organizations e.g. HOU and ESO

• more use cases

• extend tests to schools in other countries

• continue translation efforts

• diffuse products in conferences and via dedicated Web Site

WP 5 - Service activities for higher education and outreach EuroVO-AIDA – First periodic review – 24 April 2009

Massimo Ramella, WPTL, INAF

WP5 at conferences• Preliminary results and a description of WP5 activities have been (will be)

presented at the following conferences:

– Südthüringer Tag der Astronomie, Suhl, Germany, December 6, 2008

– INAF National Meeting on Outreach and Education, Milano, Italy, January 28 – 29, 2009

– General Assembly of the European Geoscience Union, Vienna, Austria, April 19 – 24, 2009

– General Assembly of the Italian Astronomical Society, Pisa, Italy, May 4 – 8, 2009

– Tage der Schulastronomie, University of Jena, Jena, Germany, June 25 – 27, 2009

WP 5 - Service activities for higher education and outreach EuroVO-AIDA – First periodic review – 24 April 2009

Massimo Ramella, WPTL, INAF

WP5 –The End

WP 5 - Service activities for higher education and outreach EuroVO-AIDA – First periodic review – 24 April 2009

Massimo Ramella, WPTL, INAF