Exploring Habitable Planets: Understanding Planetary Types and Conditions for Life, Exercises of Law

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nasa.gov Planet Hunters Guide

• National Aeronautics and Space AdministrationTable of Contents Students will participate in an activity demonstrating the benefits of using crowdsourcing to analyze large datasets. Next they will read articles highlighting ex amples of actual research occurring using volunteers to analyze or collect data. In small groups, students will discuss the benefits and challenges of crowd sourcing science by comparing and contrasting dif ferent citizen science projects. Students will debrief as a class with a discussion in which a definition of citizen science is developed. In this activity, students will participate in a series of deductive activities that will familiarize them with L E SS O N 1 : W H AT I S C I T I Z E N S C I E N C E? L E SS O N 2 : L I F E I N O U R S O L A R SYST E M - - - Supplementary Materials • • • Citizen Science Project DescriptionsScientist Information SheetsLesson 1 Data Sheet
• their own Solar System. Students will explore plan etary types, criteria that affect planetary traits, con ditions that are needed for a planet to be habitable, where these conditions exist in our Solar System and how all these things inform scientists in looking for habitable planets in other stellar systems. Portions of this lesson were adapted from the Our Place in Space activities produced by the Lunar and Planetary Institute: our_place/ This activity explores four types of stars and their characteristics, such as color, temperature, size, and lifespan. These characteristics are then used to determine the conditions for planets around each of them. Next, students compare and contrast their results to develop ideas about where it is reasonable to expect that life could be found outside our own solar system. Portions of this lesson are based on the “Activity 2 – Somewhere in the Milky Way- Star Types and Lifezones” from the GEMS curriculum resource Messages From Space, available from Lawrence Hall of Science: Planet Hunters Education Guide L E SS O N 3 : F I N D I N G T H E H A B I TA B L E ZO N E http://www.lpi.usra.edu/education/explore/ www.lhsgems.org - - Supplementary Materials • • • Supplementary Materials • • • Solar System Cards What Make a World Habitable? Investigating Exoplanets sheetHST Jewel Box ImageHabitable Zone ChartStudent Instruction Sheet sheet
• In this lesson, students will first engage in an activity that offers an opportunity to use various methods of observation to identify an object without being able to directly observe it with their eyes. Next, students will be asked to research and present to the class one of the direct or indirect methods that scientists use to detect planets around distant stars. Detection methods covered include transit, Doppler, and direct imaging. In this activity, students will create models of transits and explore how point of observation relates to the ability to observe a transit. Students will then create models exploring how planet size, distance, and orbital period affect the amount of light blocked during a transit event. Students will also explore the situations in which a transit can occur. This lesson acquaints students with the Planet Hunt ers ( by researching its goals, learning about the project’s science, and participating in the search for exoplan ets. Students will watch a video tutorial that explains L E SS O N 4 : E XO P L A N E T D E T E C T I O N L E SS O N 5 : T R A N S I T M E T H O D L E SS O N 6 : U S I N G P L A N E T H U N T E R S www.planethunters.org) citizen science project - - Supplementary Materials • • • • Supplementary Materials • Stellar System ImagesStar SignageDetection Methods sheetsEvaluate Other Systems homeworkStudent Instructions sheet
• how the Planet Hunters website works, engage in analyzing light curves and look for possible transits that might indicate the presence of exoplanets. In this activity, students will interpret light curves to determine exoplanets’ characteristics, including size, period, and distance from a star. Students will calculate the orbital period and use it to identify the distance between the detected planet and the host star using graphs displaying calculations based on Kepler’s Third Law. L E SS O N 7 : C R E AT I N G A N D I N T E R P R E T I N G L I G H T C U RV E S Supplementary Materials • Supplementary Materials • • • Planet Hunters Star I.D. ChartKepler’s Third Law graphsHomeworkHomework Answers
• In this activity, students will calculate the orbital period, semi-major axis, radius, mass, density and surface temperature of a candidate exoplanet tran siting a star. Students will use light curves from the Planet Hunters website to perform these functions, by gathering data about the planet candidates and using it to determine what types of planet they may be. Students will also discuss whether the exoplanet may be habitable. Note: high school students, but this exercise is important to understanding how scientists determine exoplan et parameters and is a good extension for gifted or advanced students. For teachers that do not wish to tackle the math, there is a planetary calculator that can be used in this lesson. In this activity, students will apply information they have learned about the solar system, star types, habitable zones, and exoplanet systems in previous activities to design and draw a planetary system model of a candidate planet. Students will base their designs on exoplanet data from a list of confirmed exoplanets. L E SS O N 8 : C A LC U L AT I N G E XO P L A N E T C H A R AC T E R I ST I C S L E SS O N 9 : P L A N E TA RY P O SS I B I L I T E S This level of math may be more appropriate for - - Supplementary Materials • • • Supplementary Materials • Equations sheetPlanetary Information sheetExoplanet Data sheetConfirmed Data Sheet
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Planet Hunters Educators Guide Introduction Bringing real science to the classroom can be empowering for students, but it is challenging to find ways for classrooms to participate in this type of activity. Citizen science projects can make it easier for teachers to incorporate real science in classroom science investigations. Citizen science is when crowd sourcing is used to solve a big data problem by asking the general public to assist scientists in either data collection or data analy sis process. Planet Hunters is a citizen science project developed by the Zooniverse and recently NASA and the Zooniverse collaborated in a rebuild of the project as well as the development of this educator guide. The activities in this educator guide enable students to study the major concepts involved in finding exoplan ets and determining their habitability with the use of models. The models aid in representing how other stellar systems with exoplanets of varying distances, sizes, and physical properties look to an outside observer. These models also aid in demonstrating how transits appear in data. This guide was developed with Planet Hunters classroom use in mind, but could also be adapted for informal education setting. Upon completion of the lessons in this educator guide, students will know more about citizen science, gain an understanding of exoplanet detection methods, be able to determine whether an exoplanet can support life as we know it, interpret data, and propose a mission to a habitable exoplanet. The goal of this guide is to enthuse students in the search for new worlds and to get them involved in real scientific research. This curriculum guide was produced by Adler Planetarium under a grant from NASA’s Exoplanet Exploration Program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Visit the program’s PlanetQuest website: gov for additional resources for teachers and students and the latest planet-finding news. http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.--

• • • • What is Citizen Science? Citizen science is a broad idea that members of the public who do not possess specialized training can partici pate in scientific research. Citizen science projects may involve collecting data, analyzing data, or both. A list of projects is available at the end of the lesson under Additional Resources. Collecting Data One of the earliest citizen science projects was the Christmas Bird Count organized by the National Audubon Society in 1900. For over a hundred years, volunteers have braved the winter weather to count birds resulting in a data set that provides conservationists with vital information about the long-term trends in bird popula tions across North America. The advent of the internet means that you can now upload your Christmas Bird Count data online, or choose to monitor your local bird population all year round using eBird, an online tool developed by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Volunteers are contributing huge quantities of valuable data that could not be collected by only a handful of scientists. Analyzing Data In addition to making it easier for volunteers to submit data to citizen science projects like eBird, The Great Sunflower Project and CoCoRaHS (Community Collaborative Rain, Hail & Snow Network), the internet has also^ P R E PA R E B AC KG R O U N D Print enough Scientist Information Sheets so that each group has information about one scientist.Print enough copies of the Lesson 1 Data Sheet for each student.Print enough copies of the Citizen Science Project Descroptions so that each group has information about one project. (Alternatively, students could read the about pages online.)Familiarize yourself with Zooniverse’s Galaxy Zoo citizen science project (www.galaxyzoo.org) by logging on and exploring the project. For more detailed information, you may wish to persue the Zookeeping in Galaxy Zoo teacher guide available at http://bit.ly/1oxPakr - - made it possible to do another type of citizen science. Projects like Galaxy Zoo or Foldit require volunteers to perform an analysis task on large data sets that scientists already have. In the case of Galaxy Zoo volunteers are asked to classify galaxy images by answering a few simple questions about the shape of the galaxy. The volunteers do not need to have specialized experience or training to participate. Too Much Data Traditionally scientists have done this type of data analysis themselves, however as the amount of data collect ed expands, this becomes increasingly impractical. Galaxy Zoo contains images from the Hubble Space Tele scope and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and so far over 1.5 million galaxies have been classified. There are still many galaxy images left to be classified and the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, construction of which began in 2014, will only make matters worse by imaging another 4 billion galaxies! Individual astronomers could never hope to make a dent in such a massive data set. This problem of too much data is not unique to astronomy: Seafloor Explorer, a Zooniverse.org project, has over 40 million images of the ocean floor that need to be ana lyzed. The two science team members would be unable to answer many interesting research questions if they did not have volunteers who were willing to identify and measure scallops, fish, sea stars and crustaceans in the images they have collected from the east coast of North America. Why Humans Are Better Than Computers Computers are now able to analyze data and crunch numbers at an astonishing pace, but there are still some tasks that are better suited to the human brain. In particular humans excel at recognizing patterns, making ---

them particularly adept at identifying faces, objects, words and sounds. Computers are now sometimes being used to identify faces, but this extremely expensive technology still only works in ideal conditions and generally fails where lighting is poor or where faces are turned to the side. Images used for scientific research, for example of galaxies or wildlife, are rarely ideal. Try getting a zebra to pose for a snapshot, or asking a galaxy to tilt a little to the left! Computers fail to identify them correctly, yet most humans can identify a zebra, even if only half the animal is visible in a poorly lit image. Many citizen sci ence projects depend on the ability of volunteers to recognize patterns in scientific data. Some of the projects, such as Galaxy Zoo, Snapshot Serengeti or Seafloor Explorer, require volunteers to identify objects in images. Other projects, such as Whale FM or Bat Detective need people to identify sounds, while Old Weather and An cient Lives utilize the human ability to identify words and letters and to decipher hand-written data sources. Spotting the Unusual In addition to possessing remarkable pattern recognition skills, the human brain is particularly good at spotting the unusual, unlike computers, which will only identify exactly what they have been asked to. This can lead to unexpected discoveries, like in the case of the Galaxy Zoo ‘Green Peas.’ Volunteers were able to identify an entirely new type of galaxy that astronomers didn’t know existed. This galaxy looked more like a star in images, but had an unusual green tint. Volunteers were able to make a collection of these objects and study them further; a computer would have ignored them. Another remarkable discovery was made by a school teacher, Hanny Van Arkel. She noticed a strange “voorwerp,” which is the Dutch for ‘thingy’, next to a galaxy in an im age. This turned out to be an entirely new type of galaxy object the likes of which had never been seen before. Time will tell if unusual discoveries are routinely made by citizen scientists, but many of the science teams who provide data for analysis are hopeful. Zooniverse: a collection of citizen science projects Both Seafloor Explorer and Galaxy Zoo are part of a collection of citizen science projects built by a team of web developers, designers, educators and scientists known as the Zooniverse. The first project, Galaxy Zoo, was built in 2008, and they have since then built over 20 projects, with more coming online regularly. --- All of the projects built by the Zooniverse are data-analysis projects, though the type of analysis volunteers are asked to undertake varies depending on the requirements of the science team doing the research. Planet Hunt ers asks volunteers to look for dips in light curves taken by the Kepler Space Telescope, whereas Old Weather requires participants to transcribe ships’ logs. Visit Zooniverse.org for a current list, as new projects often come online and some projects are retired. Projects can be retired because there is no more data left to be analyzed or because, as in the case of Galaxy Zoo Supernovae, computers’ technology has improved so that humans are no longer needed to do the analysis. -

1. 1. 3.^ E X P L A I N ( 1 0 – 1 5 M I N U T E S ) Introduce the citizen science project Galaxy Zoo to the class. Tell students that this is an example of a citi zen science project where professional scientists work with citizen scientists to make discoveries together. Introduce the following points:Model how to do a classification on Galaxy Zoo. As a class, do a couple of classifications on Galaxy Zoo asking students to vote on the answers to the questions being asked. Use the Example button in the classi fication interface to find more information about how to answer each question.Introduce citizen science being sure to discuss the following points: • • • • • • • • • • Some scientists have enormous data sets that are too large to be analyzed by individuals.Computers are not able to analyze all types of data for scientists. Humans are better at some tasks, like recognizing shapes or spotting things that are unusual.Some scientists need enormous amounts of data to be collected.The technology does not always exist to collect the data that scientists need.For some projects, websites have been built to allow volunteers to help scientists analyze or collect data.(Optional) Ask students if anybody know the name of the galaxy that our solar system is par of. The Milky Way Explain that a galaxy is made up of billions of stars, dust, gas, and other astronomical ob jects all held together by gravity. There are billions of galaxies in the universe.Galaxy Zoo is an online citizen science project.Astronomers working on Galaxy Zoo want to answer questions such as, ‘How do galaxies form?’To figure this out, they need to classify galaxies into shapes. They do this by making observations of images of galaxies. These images are taken with powerful telescopes like the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. ---
2. Facilitate a group discussion including the following points and questions: • • Describe what all scientists do. [Ask questions and collect data/conduct research to answer their questions.]How did the classifications we made in Galaxy Zoo help scientists with asking questions or collecting data?

1. 1. 1. 1. 1.^ E L A B O R AT E ( 1 5 M I N U T E S ) E VA LUAT E ( 5 M I N U T E S ) Distribute information on various citizen science projects (Snapshot Serengeti, Monarch Larva Monitoring Project, Sunspotters, and the Great Sunflower Project), or have students access the sites online.In their small groups students should identify the following:Have groups share each of their citizen science projects and create a class composite for the results.Compare and contrast the different projects.With what we have learned about scientists, lets return to our drawing of a scientist. • • • • • • • • • What are scientists trying to learn more about with this citizen science project?What kind of data or information are these scientists using in this project?Where is the data coming from?What are volunteer citizen scientists being asked to do in this project?Describe how professional scientists and citizen scientists are working together to answer the ques tion(s).What is different about these projects? What is similar?How might this be helpful to researchers? How is this helpful to citizens?Would you change your picture of a scientist at all? What do you see as a scientist? Did this lesson change their understanding of what makes a scientist who they are?How would you draw a citizen scientist? Does anything about being a citizen scientist make them look different from anyone in this classroom? -

1. 1. 1. 1. 5.^ A D D I T I O N A L R E S O U R C E S Scientific occupation description:Story of Hanny’s VoorwerpCitizen science projects that require data analysis.Citizen science projects that require data collection.Additional articles about citizen science projects. • • • • • • • • • • • • • http://astroventure.arc.nasa.gov/teachers/fact_sheets.html#generichttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/01/11/voorwerp/#.UUiOVaUz3aohttp://blog.eyewire.org/about/http://fold.it/portal/https://www.zooniverse.org/http://ebird.org/http://www.cocorahs.org/http://www.wired.com/medtech/genetics/magazine/17-05/ff_protein?currentPage=allhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6289474.stmhttp://www.npr.org/2013/03/05/173435599/wanna-play-computer-gamers-help-pushfrontier-of- brain-researchhttp://www.scientificamerican.com/citizen-science/http://www.nature.com/naturejobs/science/articles/10.1038/nj7444-259ahttp://chronicle.com/article/Crowdsourcing-a-Honey-of-an/65705/ [must create an account to use project]
   • http://news.yale.edu/2009/07/27/galaxy-zoo-hunters-help-astronomers-discoverrare-green-pea-gal axies -

Snapshot Serengeti This information is adapted from content contained on the Snapshot Serengeti website accessed on 9/24/2014 ( Ecologists are scientists that study how plants, animals, and other organisms interact with each other and their environment. Ecologists at the University of Minnesota Lion Project want to know more about how animals in Serengeti National Park interact with each other. Serengeti National Park is a wildlife reserve in Tanzania in Eastern Africa. It is home to many species of carnivores (meat eaters) including lions and cheetahs. There are also many species of herbivores (plant eaters) including elephants, gazelles, and giraffes. Lion Project ecolo gists want to learn more about how these animals interact with each other. Snapshot Serengeti is an online citizen science project that helps ecologists learn more about the carnivores and herbivores living in Serengeti National Park. Hundreds of cameras are set-up around the park. Each camera is attached to a motion sensor. When an animal moves, the camera takes a picture. Volunteer citizen scientists look at these pictures on the Snapshot Serengeti website and identify the types, numbers, and behaviors of an imals present. We know where each camera is located and when each picture was taken. After volunteers look at each image the ecologists have a record of where, when, and which animals were present.http://www.snapshotserengeti.org/^ C I T I Z E N S C I E N C E P R OJ E C T D E S C I P T I O N S ). - -

Sunspotter This information is adapted from content contained on the Sunspotter project website accessed on 9/25/2014 ( Our star, the Sun, is very active. Solar physicists are scientists who study the sun’s activity. Sunspots are one example of the Sun’s activity. A sunspot is a dark area that temporarily appears on the Sun’s surface. They are caused by the Sun’s intense magnetic activity. Even though the Sun is 150 million km (93 million miles) away, its magnetic activity affects us here on Earth. Eruptions from sunspot groups produce X-Rays and high-energy particles that can damage satellites orbiting Earth and to the electric grid. This means you’re your cell phone might not work. X-Rays and high-energy particles also endanger astronauts and aircrafts by exposing them to radiation. Solar physicists study sunspots to better understand and predict how the Sun’s magnetic activity affects us on Earth. They need to compare images of sunspots. Computers are not good at comparing these images so it is something that people need to do. Sunspotters is website where citizen science volunteers help solar physicists study how complex sunspots are. Volunteers compare images of sunspots taken by the Solar and Heliospher ic Observatory and choose which image is more complex. More than 12,000 volunteers have participated in Sunspotters.http://www.sunspotter.org^ C I T I Z E N S C I E N C E P R OJ E C T D E S C I P T I O N S ). -

Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network (CoCoRaHS) This information is adapted from content contained on the CoCoRaHS project website accessed on 9/25/2014 ( Many scientists need weather data to do their research. Precipitation, or when water falls to the Earth’s surface, is an important part of weather data. Snow, rain, hail, and sleet are all forms of precipitation. Meteorologists and hydrologists are examples of scientists who need data about precipitation. Meteorologists are scientists who study the weather while hydrologists study how water moves across and through Earth’s crust. Some hydrologists and meteorologists study droughts. A drought is when there is less precipitation over time than expected. Droughts affect us in many different ways. Farmers’ may experience decreases in how many crops they can grow. Sometimes this causes food prices to rise. Long droughts may lead to water use restric tions. Wildlife may experience food shortages because there isn’t enough water for their food to grow.. Infor mation about precipitation over time helps scientists understand and predict drought. The Community Collaborative Rain, Hail, and Snow Network (CoCoRaHS) is a citizen science project where volunteers measure and map precipitation rates in their local communities across the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. Volunteers participate in an in-person or online training session to learn how to make detailed observations of snow, rain, hail, and sleet. They learn to install and use simple tools like rain gauges. After vol unteers collect the data, it is submitted to CoCoRaHS and is available for anybody to use. In fact CoCoRaHS is the largest providers of daily meteorological data that scientists use in their research!http://www.cocorahs.org^ C I T I Z E N S C I E N C E P R OJ E C T D E S C I P T I O N S ) - --

information without needing to personally visit the site repeatedly.far away. Sometimes I use technology like automatic cameras to collectvery time-consuming, and sometimes very expensive if the field site isacross space and time to collect enough data to answer questions. It isminutes. These sorts of measurements need to be done many times1m square, or identify all the insects visiting a particular plant for threemaking observations. I do things like identify all the species in a 1m by Collecting data from the field means going to a specific place and How do you collect this data? data that can answer environmental questions.increasingly interested in collaborating with citizen scientists to createdata. Sometimes I perform my own experiments in the field. I am I read papers and collaborate with other scientists to get much of my questions? What kind of data/information do you gather to try and answer these implications for conservation and environmental policy.changes in plants and trees. The answers to these questions have bigcase, I am curious about how climate change will affect the seasonalonly that species, but also the predators that eat that species. In anotherhow the accidental introduction of a disease into one species affects notspecies that all interact with one another. For example, I am interested in My research asks questions about how humans impact groups of part of your research: Identify one or two questions that you are trying to find the answer as scientists.papers and give presentations about my results, mainly to othermodels, and put together data that others and I have collected. I writeTo answer these questions, I do field experiments, make computerspecies and how they interact with their environment and one another.questions. In my case, I study ecology, which asks questions about livingdo research. This means I try to figure out the answers to science As a Ph.D. Candidate and as Postdoctoral Fellow, my primary job is to Describe what a Ecologist does: Postdoctoral Fellow in Ecology at Harvard University Job Title: Dr. Margaret Kosmala Name: those scientists!around the world so that they can be studied. I am lucky to be one ofEarth (like TV satellite dishes). The images are then sent to scientiststhe images as radio waves to big radio dishes at different places onhours a day (there is no night-time in space). The satellites then beamThese satellites have telescopes attached to them that watch the Sun 24 NASA and the European Space Agency launch satellites into space. How do you collect this data? are born, evolve, and then decay away on the Sun.tion about the sunspots, I can track sunspots over time to see how theyminutes, to Earth. Using 'image processing' to pull out physical informa-Sun. Satellites in space send these images, which are taken every few I study large sets of images of the magnetic fields at the surface of the questions? What kind of data/information do you gather to try and answer these magnetic field strength.complexity of sunspots is related to other measurements, like size andWith the Sunspotter Zooniverse project, I want to know how the I am trying to figure out why some sunspots erupt and others don't. as part of your research: Identify one or two questions that you are trying to find the answer to summarize what I have discovered about the Sun.we receive from these satellites. Then I write and publish papers thatmany computer programs to extract information from the images that I study data from telescopes in space that are pointed at the Sun. I write Describe what a Solar Physics Researcher does: Solar Physics Researcher Job Title: Dr. Paul A. Higgins Name:

us find and size those beds.we’re using satellite images and citizen science to allow people to helptaking measurements of kelps in different places. But with Zooniverse, As a field ecologist, I typically collect this data by going out, diving, and How do you collect this data? of the seasons as well as across the decades.kelp exists, and how kelp forests grow and shrink both with the passing To try and answer these questions, I need basic information on where questions? What kind of data/information do you gather to try and answer these any signals of human influence.looking at global change in giant kelp over time, and trying to tease outchange in something that you don’t know where it is! I’m interested inthose beds have grown and changed over time. You can’t measureintensive process. Furthermore, we have precious little data on howworld that have giant kelp, but mapping those beds is an incrediblykelp beds around the planet actually are! We know the areas of the This may seem kind of funny, but we don’t know where all of the giant part of your research: Identify one or two questions that you are trying to find the answer as to the society around me.means I also spend a lot of time working on ways to connect my sciencereading, and reviewing scientific papers. Working at a public Universityspend a lot of time taking part in the discourse of science – writing,students about life in the sea and the myriad ways to study it. And Isalt marshes as part of my research. I teach graduate and undergraduate As a professor, I do a lot of things. I go out and dive or tromp through Describe what a Biologist does: Job Title: (^) Assistant Professor of Biology at UMass Boston Name: (^) Dr. Jarrett Byrnes