Many years ago, my students and I built a planetarium dome out of cardboard, and I projected the nighttime sky onto it with a personal computer, a digital projector, and a mirror. A planetarium of your own could be a fantastic teaching tool for observational astronomy. It would be much better for you, the teacher, to take control of the star projector, to be able to point out all the constellations one by one, to show their gradual drift through the sky by speeding up the motion, to show the daily and annual motions of the sun and moon through the sky, and to speed up the drifting motions of the planets among the constellations.
In my experience, you basically get an IMAX movie, and a minute or two devoted to the star projector, completely neglecting the teaching potential of having full control over an artificial sky. One daytime option is a field trip to a planetarium, but very seldom do planetaria take full advantage of the educational possibilities of a star projector. Homeschool teachers and small groups might be able to arrange special night-time observing sessions, but this isn’t normally feasible for larger schools. If you are a teacher, you are normally teaching indoors during the daytime, and to show students Leo or Scorpius, you need to be outdoors at night. One of the main difficulties with learning about the nighttime sky in a classroom is that classes are usually held during the daytime.
#Stellarium planetarium how to#
How to make a home planetarium using cardboard, a mirror, and a digital projector.
0 kommentar(er)
