Cold Spotz Suggested Reading List

1 [1]Planck starts warming up Jan 14, 2012. This means we have observed the entire sky almost 5 times since launch in May 2009.

2 [2]Example of what a research paper looks like. This has a lot of the information on the data you will be working with but is likely to be incomprehensible due to the jargon used. Do not be alarmed!

3 [3] I am appalled that parents cant answer these questions. Teachers, please teach your students these. Answers to the questions: 1. Moon reflects sunlight that is why it is bright. It rises and sets every day/night because of the Earth's rotation. At the same time, the Moon orbits around the Earth with a 28 day period. So the time it rises and sets changes depending on its position in its orbit. 2. The day sky is blue because the dust in the Earth's atmosphere scatters blue light more effectively (particles best scatter wavelengths of light of their size or smaller). It is the same reason why the sky is red at sunset. 3. We dont know. The Universe is very big and distances are large. There are most likely aliens out there but because of the large distances involved we may never discover them. 4. 6E24 Kg. 5. The air blowing over a planes wings has a different velocity above and below the wing. This difference in pressure results in a lift. This is why planes cannot fly in space - there is no air.

4 [4] WISE Zero Points to get flux densities from magnitudes.

5 In the image below, each type of bulb emits the spectrum of light below it. Can you infer from this which light corresponds to the hottest temperature and which corresponds to the coldest?

6 [5] Chris and Kat in the local newspaper.

7 [6] Meet other passionate science teachers

8 There are several interesting conferences happening next week (2/13/2012-2/17/2012). One is the Planck Intermediate Papers Conference in Bologna [7], a second is the WFIRST Conference in Pasadena [8] and a third is a conference on the first galaxies in Santa Barbara [9]

9 How one starts building a telescope on earth [10]. The Giant Magellan Telescope has competitors which are in the works as well - TMT and the European ELT.

10 [11] A well written article which touches on the cutting edge of astronomy

11 [12] Get your students involved in high altitude ballooning for science!

12 [13] Get the news of the Universe from NASA.

13 [14] The life cycle of any space mission. Have a good idea? Get started now 'cause the entire life cycle can take 10 years or more.

14 [15] This is a great article on how the process of science works (mistakes/corrections/human tendencies...). The take away message is check, check and check again and if all those cross-checks agree, make someone else repeat the experiment and reproduce your results.