Difference: UMDAstronomyCourseProjectUsingPTFData (1 vs. 2)

Revision 22017-05-10 - IvaKostadinova

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In the fall 2016 semester, I taught the Astronomy major course _ASTR310: Observational Astronomy _ at the University of Maryland. I created a course project that required the students to use data from the PTF Variable Marshal.

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The PDF file "project2-schedule.pdf" contains a summary of the project, a timeline, and the course materials that are contained in the second attached file, which is zip file.

Please contact me with questions about the material!

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Please contact me with questions about the material!

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Detailed course description

The students in this course are typically sophomores, and this is typically their first experience in using telescopes and CCDs and analyzing “real” data. In the fall 2016 semester, 24 students were enrolled in the course, and they worked in teams of 4 on the two course projects. Preparatory materials about the survey and variable stars were incorporated into the class meetings and readings, and an activity designed to familiarize the students with the Variable Marshal interface, the database query system, and the format and appearance of the photometric and spectroscopic data was completed in the computer lab. The course project required the student teams to develop a scientifically-plausible hypothesis related to variable stars that they could test by using data from the Variable Marshal. The students then queried the database, retrieved the data that they needed, and analyzed the data appropriately to test their hypotheses. Each student team wrote a research-style paper about their hypothesis, procedures, and results and gave an oral presentation on their project to the Astronomy Department. The general goals of this project were to familiarize the students with the usage of large astronomical databases and the types of scientific questions that can be answered using such data. In general, the students discovered that asking good scientific questions relating to the available data was quite difficult, and even though there were thousands of sources in the database, selecting appropriate data for their projects reduced the number of relevant sources significantly. All materials relating to this course project have been uploaded to the GROWTH twiki for use by other collaborators and educators.

-- MelissaHayesGehrke - 20 Dec 2016

Revision 12016-12-20 - MelissaHayesGehrke

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META TOPICPARENT	name="WebHome"

The PDF file "project2-schedule.pdf" contains a summary of the project, a timeline, and the course materials that are contained in the second attached file, which is zip file.

Please contact me with questions about the material!

-- MelissaHayesGehrke - 20 Dec 2016

META FILEATTACHMENT	attachment="project2-schedule.pdf" attr="" comment="Description, timeline, and content of project." date="1482262078" name="project2-schedule.pdf" path="project2-schedule.pdf" size="65318" stream="project2-schedule.pdf" user="Main.MelissaHayesGehrke" version="1"
META FILEATTACHMENT	attachment="astr310-materials.zip" attr="" comment="Zip file containint all materials relevant to project." date="1482262116" name="astr310-materials.zip" path="astr310-materials.zip" size="11987120" stream="astr310-materials.zip" user="Main.MelissaHayesGehrke" version="1"

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