Welcome to the Dark Skies Rangers Program!
To facilitate any plans you may have to do any of the Dark Skies Rangers activities and/or carry out the GLOBE at Night campaign in your community, below is a table listing some handouts.
Overall, each of the activities in the list includes information on the appropriate grade levels, overview, purpose, standards (both U.S. National Science Education Standards and Arizona Science Standards), objectives, time involved, materials and tools, preparation/prerequisites, background information, lesson sequence, student worksheets extensions, questions, integrations, and teacher resources.
There is one activity that is a little different from the others, named “Quiet Skies”. It focuses on Radio Frequency Interference, or RFI, which is the radio equivalent of light pollution. RFI effectively blinds radio telescopes at certain frequencies, making it impossible to study the Universe at those frequencies. The Quiet Skies activity (created by the U.S. National Radio Astronomy Observatory) introduces radio astronomy and the need for quiet skies to the public through an activity with an AM radio and a handheld fan. To learn more, visit www.quietskies.org.
In the Dark Skies Education Kit directory, there are materials you might need to reproduce the aspects of the light shielding demo that comes in the kit.
There is also a directory for brochures from the International Dark-Sky Association on the effects of light pollution on energy, safety, human health and wildlife (in color or black and white). In addition there is a directory with practical guides on “Introduction to Light Pollution – What’s the Problem?”, on light pollution and its effect on wildlife and on residential lighting (in color or black and white).
Finally there is a directory on GLOBE at Night, which includes the GLOBE at Night activity packets for teachers and families as well as the GLOBE at Night postcard and flyer. There is also a data directory with visual observations of the constellations used, as well as including observations using digital “Sky Quality Meters”. There are 2 files that direct you to be able to download Google Earth and Stellarium. You can use Google Earth to view GLOBE at Night data. The planetarium program Stellarium will show you what is up in the sky at any time or location. Both programs are downloadable on-line for free. Google Earth can be found at http://earth.google.com/download-earth.html and Stellarium can be found at www.stellarium.org/.
We hope this is helpful. If you have any further questions, please contact me at 520-318-8535 or cwalker@noao.edu.
Best regards,
Connie Walker
director, Dark Skies Rangers program & the GLOBE at Night campaign
associate scientist & senior science education specialist, NOAO
