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Wiki for the Spitzer Teachers Research Project

What is the Spitzer Space Telescope Research Program for Teachers and Students?

The Spitzer Science Center (SSC) and the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO) have designed a program for teacher and student research using observing time on the Spitzer Space Telescope. This program has its goals the fundamental NASA goals of inspiring and motivating students to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics as well as to engage the public in shaping and sharing the experience of exploration and discovery. Our educational plan addresses the NASA objectives of improving student proficiency in science and improving science instruction by providing a unique opportunity to a group of teachers and students to observe with Spitzer and work with Spitzer archival data. This program allows a team of teachers and their students (with the help of a mentor astronomer) to use Director's discretionary observing time on the Spitzer Space Telescope for educational observations. Read more about us on the Cool Cosmos website.

What (and Who) is this Wiki for?

This wiki is a place for the participants (teachers and scientists and students too) to share (and continue to develop!) materials based on their experiences with this program.

Anyone can view these pages, but if you'd like to edit them, please email Luisa to get an account set up.

Introduction to Infrared and Spitzer

A general introduction to infrared astronomy and the Spitzer Space Telescope, with links to go to for more information.

Research Tools

How to get started, software, tutorials, overviews, and more.

Current Research Projects

Students, teachers, and scientists throughout the US are working together on a wide variety of Spitzer research projects. Currently they include a variety of projects ranging from the hunt for young stars in IC 2118, to exploring the supermassive black hole in Arp102B.

Future Research Project Ideas

Here is a place to explore future research project ideas.

Misc. Lesson Plans, Activities, and Useful Websites

Please feel free to contribute. We do ask that you include contact information (name and email address) when submitting lesson plans and activities. This will help users of the site in the event they have questions. Also, when posting a website, please provide a brief description of the site along with the web link.

Information for students (by teachers)

These pages contain a guide for students written by teachers. The original version of this was created by Theresa Moody.

Information for students (in research teams)

These pages are for students and teachers in research teams -- right now, this is all Tim Spuck's team of students from Oil City High School.

Information for teachers (by scientists)

This link contains lots of information for teachers (or advanced students) written by scientists. There is stuff here on a wide range of things, from downloading Spitzer data to information specific to each project.

Leftover "Getting started on the wiki" stuff (including manuals for how to edit files)

Consult the User's Guide for tons of information on using (including editing files with) the wiki software. Playground to experiment with formatting.

• Configuration settings list
• MediaWiki FAQ
• MediaWiki release mailing list