Have access to professional telescope.. science project for 3rd grader??

[sandypier]

Hello!

Well I'm not really an astronomy buff, but I'm the mom of a young girl, Clara, who is into all things science and I try my best to foster it!

My neighbour and his wife has just acquired a professional quality telescope.  He has it and has invited us over to have some fun with it.  I know that it's a good enough quality one that they have been looking at planets with it.

I haven't technically asked him yet but, he's always very encouraging of Clara's scientific interests and I'm absolutely positive that he would be completely on board with allowing/helping with a science fair project and helping my daughter use the telescope for it.

The problem is, I have no idea what kind of topic she could do that would be:

A ) simple enough for a 9 year old, and

B ) would best make use of the equipment we have available. 

All the astronomy science fair project ideas I could find for her age group were based on things that don't make use of such a great piece of equipment obviously, since it's not something readily available to most!

I plan to ask my neighbour as well if he has any ideas, but I thought I would put this out there so that I can be armed with ideas already when we visit just in case!

I would like to take advantage of the opportunity and give her something new and interesting to explore.

I don't care as much about whether the topic is super experimental or "impressive".  Her school's science fair projects aren't judged at this age or anything, this is just for the experience, the fun and the learning opportunity!

Thanks in advance for any help you can offer!!

[damnut]

Hi There ,

Welcome to SGL, that's a nice problem you have their!.

The first thing I would do is download a Planetarium program to show the sky. Plenty out there but try stellarium its great, free and simple to use to be found here www.stellarium.org . A book to help you round the sky is 'turn left at Orion'.

Also find out where your local astro club is as they will hold meets and new members usually welcomed especially young enthusiasts. There. Must also be some online resource for curriculum for learning. It would be different here in the UK.

Good Luck

[jnb]

A practical question is exactly what is the telescope, what other equipment do you have and how technically savvy you and your daughter are. That will make a difference to how easy it is to handle and so what you can practically achieve.

A second practical question is when do you need to do this? There's no point in suggesting looking at something which isn't visible until December if you need to do this by September.

[Paul73]

In the spirit of keeping it simple and engaging, something around the moon or Jupiter and its moons would be best.

Paul

[ronin]

How about simply selecting an observing program?

The Astro League set out several:

Home page is: https://www.astroleague.org/

The programs are under the Observe tab then Programs,

Link direct is: https://www.astroleague.org/al/obsclubs/AlphabeticObservingClubs.html

One other that comes to mind is there is a set of couble stars on the Delaware Astro Site, these are selected because the stars are of contrasting colours.

The list is I think about 20 of them so easy to work through if they re all visible.

This is the list: http://dvaa.org/AData/ADDoubles.html

Managed to pick the wrong search result and this one appeared: http://deepskyjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/coloured_double_stars1.pdf

Looks very similar but a few less (haven't counted).

In effect she can make a "project" out of the coloured stars and record when seen, what she saw, date, time and any other note.

The Astro League programs are in efect defined and she would follow (within) reason the program.

If your neighbour has a goto (sounds like it might be) then half of any project would be learning/knowing what the scope requires to operate. If your daughter learns and knows what is required to set up a goto she will be welcomed at any and every observing night held by any club anywhere on this planet.

The mention of Jupiter brings to mind another but very simple one.

Gallileo recorded the positions of the 4 moons he could see when observing Jupiter.

She could repeat that, although it is not really a "project" may she could do it as an "extra" since a look at Jupiter would take about a minute, then she could sketch Jupiter and where the moons were positioned.