Bareket Observatory Outreach

…It Started with Abraham

Israel has been involved in astronomy from the very beginning of history. Astronomy is an embedded part of our nation's legacy.

"Look towards heaven, and count the stars, if you will be able to count them."

In modern Israel - the Bareket observatory introduces middle and high school teachers and students from around the globe and provides them with the structure to perform research projects in their classroom. This is being done with state of the art on-line activities.

Despite funding challenges much has been accomplished and intensified due to the International Year of Astronomy 2009, largely on a voluntary basis of the observatory's staff. The International Year of Astronomy 2009 is an unprecedented opportunity to present astronomy to teachers and students, especially to those who don't have any past experience with this topic.

The Bareket observatory is the most sophisticated research and educational observatory in Israel that is also open to the public. It is committed to introduce the universe to any and everyone, no matter where they live.

One of the main goals or our ASTRO-EDU program is to find a method of instruction that models the processes of scientific inquiry and exploration used by scientists. It is "research-based" in the sense that it integrates actual scientific research with education. It brings the fun of exploring and the excitement of discovery into the classroom by getting students to actually do science, and not just learn about it from lectures and activities.

As an integrated part of the program we're faced with very interesting operational challenges & goals:

• Developing new and improved methods of astronomical-communication worldwide.
• Creating new techniques to improve multicultural cooperation.
• Distribute cutting edge technological advances to the global educational system.
• Adapting the use of new astronomical, technological and scientific tools to enhance the learning experience.
• Enabling all students an equal opportunity to benefit from all of the advances within our ASTRO-EDU program.

Students worldwide participate in the ASTRO-EDU program by using the observatory's on-line activities and completing their observations with the observatory's state of the art remote Internet telescope.

The students collect and interpret this information and work together as collaborators in a cooperative rather than competitive environment.

The observatory's remote controlled telescope consists of 15" f/2.8 custom Astrograph, modified Celestron C14 working at f/8.7, and a Paramount ME robotic mount.

The telescope assembly permits fine focusing using a computer-controlled temperature compensated focuser connected to the custom reducer / corrector.

The telescope is equipped with an SBIG ST8XE CCD camera, a 10 position filter wheel with Schuller and AstroDon photometric and narrow band filters, and a spectra grating to perform spectroscopic measurements.

The entire robotic observatory is controlled via the web by the students using only a simple web browser such as Internet explorer.

Now it's more reachable than ever to bring students from all around the globe to collaborate together.

The teacher has a full control over the observatory: automatic focus, exposure times, binning, external auto guiding for long exposures, target selecting, and so on. The observatory has an on-line high sensitivity video fisheye camera and a Boltwood cloud sensor II so the teachers can see the telescope and 'sense' the weather as it works.

Carl Pennypacker, PhD, an astrophysicist at the University of California at Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, has used the telescope with his students and comments:

“It was great. The students got a real thrill, and our image was beautiful. Thanks so much.”

One of our goas was to provide a means for students all over the world to meet and collaborate on projects of mutual interest.

During the Chicago-Israel high school astronomical video conference, students from Chicago and Jerusalem controlled the Bareket observatory's remote telescope and took images of various objects, including comet Holmes 17P, which was present in the sky at that time.

After the conference the students processed the data and remained to keep in touch. The main purpose of the web conference was to introduce the two groups, which share a mutual love for astronomy.

Dennis Erickson, a high school astronomy teacher in Chicago – had this to say about the High School Astronomical Conference;

"As a young student in the 1960s, I dreamed of controlling a large telescope and taking images of faint galaxies from a dark sky site and then analyzing those images and others taken from the other side of the planet-collaborating with other astronomers to discover a new supernova.

In my opinion, I will point out that the only draw-back to advancement of science is when that level does not match the same level of maturity and harmony among Earth's occupants. There exists both a wonderful opportunity and a sobering responsibility."

Star Parks scouts program:

Star Parks is a program for Boy and Girl Scouts (of all levels) to invite their peers to join them in raising awareness about astronomy & light pollution and improving the skies in their community.
Star Parks is an IYA2009 Dark Skies Awareness cornerstone project.

“My name is Mike and I'm here with a couple of my friends of which are very interested in astronomy.

Now the scouts are interested enough about astronomy that they are inspired to help reduce light pollution around their community so everyone can see more stars.” Mike Kevin and Garrett.

In order to achieve a comprehensive coverage for the project – the observatory's staff identified the need to create a large educational database for students and teachers

Online Multilanguage astronomical database –
Astro EDU program

To address the needs of a wider audience of teachers and students, steps have been taken to supply web-based foundational resources for the research programs.

The observatory is currently working on a unique - one of it’s kind astronomical on-line data base web site, and is looking for funding in order to build an appropriate web structure for it.

Teachers could use the new on line database in order to support the implementation of their research in the classroom. The database also enables younger students to download and use the observatory's data on their own.
At the moment we are working on Hebrew and Russian versions of the materials. And, in order to reach out to as many Israeli kids as possible, we plan to have an Arabic translation of our content in the future as well.
In the astronomical database there are articles & lesson plans ; from the solar system to cosmology & photometry, classroom posters for download by subject, CCD library, tutorials, interactive solar system tour, remote control activities with a Mars rover robot model, live feeds from the observatory - and much more.
The main purpose is to attract more students into science and astronomy.

We want to keep it free and open to all interested.

As more and more people are enjoying those unique tools, we also found that there is a need to assist those who can't attend to the observatory due to physical, geographical or financial reasons.
In order to answer this need, and to attract more people towards astronomical subjects we have introduced:

From time to time the observatory produces live free astronomical web casts of selected astronomical events such as as solar eclipses, meteor showers, lunar transits and more. At the 2003 solar eclipse more than 100,000 viewers watched the live web cast.

Live astronomical web casts – through the observatory telescopes can be viewed at:

http://www.bareket-astro.com/view_en.html