MPS Internships in Public Science Education - MPS-IPSE: Sensing the Radio Universe

Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute, Rosman NC

Investigators

Abstract

AST-0324729 PI: Michael Castelaz Inst: PARI The general public's experience with the universe is often limited in space and time. The observable universe beyond the thin slice of the visible spectrum is often overlooked. Strikingly, newspapers and magazines, television and radio, and the internet, broadcast almost daily news about discoveries in astronomy that have been made at radio, millimeter, infrared, ultraviolet, x-ray, and gamma-ray wavelengths. How can the public relate to these discoveries? This project, led by Dr. Michael Castelaz, will develop a new portable planetarium program that will immerse the audience in the radio universe to give them first hand experience with a part of the electromagnetic spectrum they might not otherwise ever be aware of. The program will employ a radio view of the sky projected on the portable planetarium dome, and an accessory projector simulating a pulsar by flashing light, sound, and touch through beepers that the audience will be given. The program will be accompanied by a multimedia presentation that can be used beforehand in a lecture or class situation, or used in the portable planetarium itself. The multimedia presentation will also be available on a website. The development of the radio sky program requires the synergistic efforts of individuals with a broad range of talents from physics to electronics, from art and computer graphics to education. A team of undergraduate multimedia and physics majors will develop and build a projection cylinder for the portable planetarium that projects the view of the universe as seen at radio wavelengths, i.e., the radio sky. The students will also develop and build the pulsar projector accessory for the cylinder. The key to the use of the new projector will be the student developed multimedia program which will describe the radio sky. Over a two-year period the project will involve 12 students who will work with a professional planetarium operator, two professional astronomers, and a multimedia expert with planetarium experience. The programs the student teams develop will impact the western North Carolina region where more than 50,000 students and general public will be visited with the portable planetarium in classrooms and public open houses. On a broader scale, portable planetariums have been sold in over forty-five countries around the world with an estimated 12 million individuals participating in portable planetarium programs each year. The project has the potential to reach these individuals. This project is funded by the MPS Office of Multidisciplinary Activities. ***