Seventh Years: Lesson Three

That day Professor Nakamura had sent out an announcement for the students to meet him not in the usual classroom, but at the highest level of the astronomy tower. Impressively large telescopes were set up for the students, and Professor Nakamura was excited to see them being used. It was always fascinating to watch the young engage with the stars and planets. “Welcome everyone, tonight we will be using the telescopes,” Professor Nakamura informed them with a smile.

“But first, a small lecture. The furthest planet from the Earth is Pluto, at 40AU from the Sun. Then you have the Kelper Belt, and beyond that the Oort Cloud at between 5,000AU and 100,000AU. Quite a distance, and about a quarter of the way to the nearest star. So, once we leave the solar system we change our units to light years, which is the amount of distance light can travel in a year. Also used are parsecs, which are the distance from the Sun using parallax where the angle formed is one arc per second. One arc minute contains sixty arc seconds. So, a parsec is approximately 3.26156 light years. Which leads us to tonight’s activity – measuring distances of our nearest stars!” Professor Nakamura said in an excited tone that inferred he genuinely thought applying mathematics was something to be celebrated. “Take the measurements and use maths to determine their distance from Earth. I want the answers in both parsec and light years. Do feel free to ask for help if you need it,” Professor Nakamura informed them genially.

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Roleplay the lesson and have your student take the measurements of a nearby star for full marks. Feel free to godmod Professor Nakamura helping you if you want.

Homework: Extra points for those who “determine” the distance to one of these stars in their post as their student. (Meaning have the parsec and light year distance to one of the stars below in your post. Google is a friend.)

Proxima Centauri
Alpha Centauri A
Alpha Centauri B
Lalande 21185
Sirius (binary star)
Luyten 726-8 (binary star)
Ross 154
Ross 248

 

[Emmanuel Okoye]

Emmanuel walked into the astronomy classroom, and was pretty eager to get to use his telescope as the professor suggested. He took some notes as the professor was speaking, making sure that he had all of the important things down that the professor was saying. He made sure to get the numbers and the way in which they were to measure things. He went to telescope and then spent the lesson getting the distance, the first couple he had to get the professor to help out, and then he began getting it much more easily. He did this for the length of the lesson until the professor wrapped things up and dismissed them.

 

[Rory Styx]

Professor Nakamura promised they would actually get to use the telescopes and look at the stars that lesson but first, a lecture which seemed to always be the case. Rory took out a sheet of parchment and followed along the short lecture taking notes as they discussed the distances across space and the nearest planet and stars to earth and how to go about measuring them. It was complicated, more so than most of the things they learned about in Astronomy. After the lecture Professor Nakamura transitioned into their activity, measuring the distance to their nearest star. Rory moved over to the telescope and started to do the maths to calculate the distance to Proxima Centauri. He had to cross out his numbers and start again several times before he got a number he was happy with and he turned it into the professor on his way out of the classroom.