Syllabus   Study Questions Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Links   Tutorials   Astronomy Picture of the Day: Every day a new exciting image of the cosmos!   McKim Observatory

ASTRONOMY 103: Moons and Planets     Week 9   Spring  2009 Lab Update Date Class Topic Readings/Assignments Monday,    March 30 Mars overview    Mars PPT Ch. 10   Wednesday,  April 1 Group discussion of Chapter 10   Ch. 10 Reading Quiz Chapter 10 Friday,    April 3  Spectroscopy reading :   The two handouts on spectroscopy reading 1    reading 2                 * marks optional (but useful!) readings   week 1 week2 week 3 week 4 week 5   week 6   week 7 week 8 week 9 week 10 week 11   week 12 week 13 week 14   Full Schedule

Announcements:

Looking ahead to next week: Mars Exploration Assignment due Monday and Wednesday

Mars Exploration Small Group Assignment: Presentations in class are Monday April 6,  and Wednesday  April 8. (40% of your "assignments" grade) In  groups of 2- 4 research and prepare a presentation on one of the Mars missions listed. Plan on giving a 15 minute presentation on the day assigned for your mission. For your research, start with the mission web site listed. You'll have to dig around a bit on the web sites. I personally don't find these web sites to be well organized. You may think otherwise. For Mars Global Surveyor, Mars Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter there will be a horizontal gray menu bar near the top with choices for "overview", "science", "technology", " the mission", etc. Follow those links to find more information. To find out about the instruments on each, click on the "Science" tab and scroll to the bottom. There you should find a link to the instruments, and sometime you have to follow more links to get more info. Images from the mission are usually found under the "multimedia" tab.  The other missions are organized differently; you'll have to look around.  Things to look for are: the mission objectives, mission time line, major accomplishments, the scientific instruments (what they are, what they measure, what they found), the scientific accomplishments, images and other data (maps of various types etc). . I will post a sign up sheet for the missions/topic in the classroom.

Past:

• Phoenix: http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/

Current:

• Mars Odyssey: http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/odyssey/ 

• Mars Exploration Rover: http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html 

• Mars Express: http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/area/index.cfm?fareaid=9

• Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter: http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/mro/  

• Mars Science Laboratory: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/index.cfm

Assignments: