Students will:
• speculate on the reason(s) why humans have organized star clusters into constellations.
• create a constellation and write an original myth associated with it.
• research, present background on, and define attributes of an existing constellation.
• use research gathered about stars that compose a constellation in order to chart the stars' temperature and luminosity on a Hertzsprung-Russel (HR) Diagram.
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Beginning Level Activity
1. Display the page from the book Astronomical Miscellany depicting constellation diagrams including Ursa Major and Ursa Minor. Ask students what they see. Use Questions for Teaching for this artwork to continue the discussion. Chart responses.
2. Through discussion, ask/tell students what a constellation is. Ask students to speculate about why people would need constellations. Explain that constellations help astronomers to organize the stars in the sky and identify what part of the sky they are looking at.
3. Ask students to speculate about what type of book this page comes from. Explain that it comes from an astronomical textbook that was written about 800 years ago. This textbook included some of the 48 constellations known to the writer at the time. Tell students that today there are 88 constellations recognized by astronomers.
4. Show students the image of the stars that make up Ursa Major on the handout Ursa Major's Stars. Ask them if they see a pattern that would help them remember this group of stars among all the stars in the sky. After discussion, show students an image of the constellation outlined, such as the image of Ursa Major on Discovery Education's Web site. You may also wish to show students the constellation in a virtual reproduction of our solar system through a free computer program called Google Earth, which you can download to your classroom's computers. In Google Earth, you can view galaxies, constellations, and planets by choosing "View" from the main menu and clicking "Switch to Sky."
5. Tell students that the constellations were associated with stories or myths. Share the story of Ursa Major (see background information).
6. Tell students they are going to create their own constellations. Give each student a piece of black construction paper and six paper stars. Have students hold the stars in their hand about a foot above their paper and release them so they fall randomly on the page. Use a glue stick to adhere the stars where they landed.
7. Using white chalk, each student will draw an animal, creature or object that incorporates his or her stars to form an original constellation.
8. Have students write myths of grade-appropriate length that feature their constellations.
9. Bind the constellations and myths together into a class book.
Intermediate Level Activity
10. Have students make a K-W-L chart about constellations and have them fill in the first two columns of the chart. Under the "K" column, students should write what they know about constellations. Under the "W" column, students should write what they want to know about constellations.
11. Hand out copies of the two student handouts. Each student will select a constellation to research from the Constellation List. Students should then use the Constellation Research handout as a guide for their research and a place to record their findings.
12. After student handouts are complete, bind them together to make a class book.
13. Have students share their findings. Now that they have conducted the research, they should be able to define "magnitude," "spectral class," and "color" in relation to a star's characteristics. (For more information about these terms, see the advanced projects for students on the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Web site. Re-visit the K-W-L chart. Tell students to complete the "L" column of the chart by writing down what they learned about constellations.
Advanced Level Activity
14. Tell students to conduct research to determine the luminosity of the stars that make up their constellation. For information about how to calculate a star's luminosity, visit the How Stuff Works Web site.
15. Make a large Hertzsprung-Russel (HR) Diagram. An HR diagram plots a star's temperature (on the x axis) against its luminosity (on the y axis). For more information about HR diagrams, visit the Science Museum of Virginia's Web site. Tell students to refer to the temperature findings on their Constellation Research handouts and their research about the luminosity of the stars that make up their constellation. Have students chart where the stars that make up their constellation are located on the HR diagram.
16. Discuss the chart by comparing the stars on the class HR diagram to the HR diagram on the Science Museum of Virginia's web site. Do the stars appear to fall into the "Main Sequence" or are they "Giants," "Super Giants," or "Dwarfs"?
17. Display the page from the Getty showing the constellation diagrams. Compare this description of constellations to the descriptions the students created through their constellation research. As a class, discuss what a contemporary version of this text would look like. Discuss how computer graphics and photographs taken with telescopes have changed the look and function of scientific texts, influencing our understanding of astronomy as a whole.
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| Constellation Diagrams, from Astronomical Miscellany, English, early 1200s |
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