White Dwarf Stars and the Age of the Galaxy

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White Dwarfs and the Age of the Galaxy Workshop
July 14 - July 18, 2006 - McDonald Observatory

What is a white dwarf?

Introduction to white dwarfs - NASA
http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/science/know_l1/dwarfs.html

More details - NASA
http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/science/know_l2/dwarfs.html

During this workshop, you will learn about white dwarfs from expert astronomers. You will also do three classroom based activities about stellar evolution, white dwarfs, and calculating the age of our Galaxy.

What is a color magnitude diagram?

M55: Color Magnitude Diagram
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap010223.html

Your team will create a color magnitude diagram for the star cluster. To do this, you will use a research telescope and instruments to gather images of star clusters. Then, you will use computers (Apple iMacs) and free software downloadable from the Internet to analyze the images. Finally, you will use Microsoft Excel to store your data and produce the color magnitude diagram.

To give you an idea of what we will do, here are Shockwave guided exercises by Dr. Michael Briley about making a color magnitude diagram (and why astronomers make them). Don't worry about actually doing the exercises. Just aim to get a feel for what these diagrams mean.

Color Magnitude Diagram of the Pleiades
http://planck.phys.uwosh.edu/mike/exercises/
pleiades/pleiades.html

Color Magnitude Diagrams
http://planck.phys.uwosh.edu/mike/exercises/cmds/cmds.html

About astronomical images

What is an astronomical image?
http://www.spacetelescope.org/projects/fits_liberator/improc.html

WDAG - Workshop Schedule

Topics from National Science Education Standards

Science Domain
Science as Inquiry	Abilities necessary to do scientific inquiry Understanding about scientific inquiry
Physical Science	Structure and properties of matter Interactions between energy and matter Conservation of energy and the increase of disorder
Earth and Space Science	Origin and evolution of the Universe
Science & Technology	Understanding about science and technology
History and Nature of Science	Science as a human endeavor Nature of scientific knowledge

The "White Dwarfs and the Age of the Galaxy" workshop is supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under grant AST 0307315. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the NSF. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) provides additional support under an Education and Public Outreach supplement to Grant/Contract/Agreement No. NAG5-13070 issued through the Office of Space Science.

16 May 2006
Astronomy Program · The University of Texas at Austin · Austin, Texas 78712
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