Asteroids, Comets and NEOs - student worksheet This worksheet is based around the topic of asteroids, comets, NEOs and impacts and aims to help you learn about these objects in the Solar System. The worksheet can be downloaded and printed out for use in the classroom or at home.
Cassiopeia A in many colors Supernovae are the violent explosions of stars occurring at the end of their lives. On average, one supernova goes off every 50 years or so in our Galaxy. The enormous explosion from these stars blasts material out into the surroundings at very high speeds, sweeping up the surrounding gas into a giant bubble. This is known as a supernova remnant. The shell (or bubble) shines at many different wavelengths, and is very bright in the X-ray because the material from the explosion is very hot.
Craters in the classroom Objectives: After carrying out this activity, students will be able to recognise and describe how impact craters are formed on Earth. Introduction
Create a Hubble Tuning Fork diagram Galaxies are huge collections of stars, gas and dust held together by gravity. Our Galaxy, the Milky Way, is known as a spiral galaxy as it has spiral arms that wind their way around the center of the galaxy (or bulge). The first galaxies were identified as far back as the 17th Century by Charles Messier. Messier compiled a list of 110 star clusters and spiral nebulae which he discovered while searching the sky for comets. It wasn't until the early 20th century however that these nebulae were in fact spiral galaxies.
Impact Craters on Mars Finding your way around Mars The first step in this activity is to change the view in Google Earth, to Mars.
Impact Craters on the Moon Finding your way around the Moon The first step in this activity is to change the view in Google Earth, to the Moon.
Join our search for new planets Objectives: This observing programme will contribute to the observations made by professional astronomers of exoplanet candidates. Please note: This project only runs between March and September because of the visibility of the Galactic Bulge.Microlensing events are very rare because they rely on a chance alignment between a distant star and a closer star. Because of this we need to look at a part of the sky which has lots of stars to increase the chances of us catching these events. The highest concentration of stars in the sky is towards the bulge or centre of our Galaxy, the Milky Way.
Make color images from astronomical observations There are many thousands of astronomical data files in our archive. We have created an easy-to-use archive search page that lets you limit your search by different attributes.
Making Craters Objectives: The aim of this activity is to study the effect of changing different impact parameters on the size of crater and energy of the impact. In this activity we will be using a specially written web application called the Impact Calculator. This has been written by the Faulkes Telescope team. You will need to have Flash Player 9 (or higher) installed for it to run in your web browser (you will be directed to download the necessary plugin, if it is not installed).
Measuring impact craters on Earth In this activity you will be measuring craters of different sizes on Earth which are the result of an impact from space. The impacts causing these craters would result in a variety of climatic changes - small impacts would generally affect only the local area, whereas larger impacts could have massive changes in the global weather systems. To begin, download Google Earth, then follow the instructions below. Finding and measuring impact craters
