American Museum of Natural History
A Closer Look at Mars
A website looks at how we know so much about Mars—telescopes, robots, and spacecraft—and the search for martian life. Following the informational text are three questions that quiz pupils about possible life on Mars.
Curated OER
Black Holes
High schoolers study black holes and see how space telescopes can provide data to support current hypotheses. They examine the anatomy of a black hole using a diagram of an accretion disk, the event horizon, and jets of hot gas.
American Museum of Natural History
Planetary Mysteries
A website all about planetary mysteries—it's a one-stop-shop for all things, stars, planets, and space travel. Scholars read an astronomy overview to discover the page's big ideas, then choose from the plethora of resources, including...
University of Colorado
Phases of Charon
Pluto, although no longer considered a planet, has five moons. Pluto's moon, Charon, is the focus of a resource that describes how the moon is viewed from the surface of Pluto. Photos help individuals see how Charon would look at...
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Scoping Out Space
Pupils research existing and proposed telescope projects and synthesize their knowledge by creating presentations on each telescope and speculating about which project is worthy of additional funding.
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NASA Anniversary
In this NASA Anniversary instructional activity, students complete activities such as reading a passage, phrase matching, fill in the blanks, correct words, multiple choice, spelling, sequencing, scrambled sentences, writing questions,...
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Planetary Jeopardy!
Space Science can be so much fun, especially when you play Planetary Jeopardy! This game tests students on what they know about Roman Gods, the planets and moons in our solar system, and the Earth's rotation.
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Searching For Protoplanetary Disks
Students download NASA Hubble Space Telescope views of star-forming regions in nebulae and look for evidence of planetary systems forming beyond our own solar system. They hypothesize about mysterious objects in NASA HST images.
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Classifying Galaxies
Students classify galaxies by their shape using the Hubble Tuning Fork Diagram.
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How Many Stars in the Milky Way?
Students perform an experiment in which they will use a statistical method called `sampling' to count to a billion (and beyond). Students practice sampling by estimating the number of characters on a page from the classified section of a...
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Stellar Fingerprints: the Spectra of Stars
Students explain how an element can be identified using emission spectra. They relate the emission spectrum of hydrogen to its absorption spectrum and identify hydrogen absorption lines in the spectrum of stars.
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SETI WebQuest and the Drake Equation
Students complete a WebQuest where they research the Internet for extraterrestrial intelligence. In this extraterrestrial lesson plan, students also explore how the Drake Equation can predict the occurrence of life elsewhere.
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The Next Logical Step in Astronomy
Students research future astronomy endeavors and how the exploration with contribute to astronomy and humanity. In this astronomy lesson plan, students research, present, and debate the topics as a class.
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Volcanoes in Space
Pupils research volcanoes on the Internet to compare/contrast the volcanoes on Earth to the ones found on Io, a moon of Jupiter. Students list the similarities and differences in science journals, and illustrate pictures of the volcanoes.
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Life Cycle Of Stars
Students analyze characteristics that indicate human life cycles, and then apply these observational principles to various NASA pictures of stars to synthesize patterns of stellar life cycles. They observe NASA images of stars at various...
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Measuring Speed in the Universe
In this measuring speed in the universe worksheet, learners use photographs of 3 astronomical phenomena including supernova explosions, coronal mass ejections and solar flare shock waves to find how fast they move. The photographs show...
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Cosmic Collision
In this cosmic collision worksheet, students explore interactive online website to study about the dynamics of different galaxies. They write short answers to 8 questions that follow.
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The Planets Terra Firma
Learners explore the theories of the creation of the universe and examine the properties of celestial bodies. They analyze the relationship between the sun, Earth and the other planets.