History of HOU

2010 Feb 25. Cape student makes mark on universe. By ROBERT GOLD. Excerpt: Kelsie Krafton, a senior at Sturgis Charter Public School in Hyannis, hopes to add her initials to the names of the two asteroids she has discovered...
...Two years ago, Kelsie Krafton took her first physics class. Now, she's discovering asteroids and soaring toward a career in astrophysics.
As a then-sophomore at Sturgis Charter Public School in Hyannis, Kelsie breezed through her first physics class. She was bored by how easy it seemed. But one day, she flipped on a television show about astrophysics and was hooked.
"It kind of added a whole new dimension to the subject," she said of viewing astrophysics as filled with adventure and exploration. Kelsie decided she wanted to pursue a career in the field.
This week, the 17-year-old Falmouth resident received official word that she's discovered two asteroids through a global space exploration project. The International Astronomical Search Collaboration, a network of research institutes and science laboratories, confirmed that the high school senior had found two new asteroids.
The program's founder, Dr. Patrick Miller of Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, Texas, e-mailed Kelsie's Sturgis math teacher, Randy Carspecken, with the news.
Kelsie, who submitted her asteroid findings on Valentine's Day, found out about the accomplishment when she checked her laptop Tuesday night. She ran around her family home in celebration.
"This is something (she'll) never forget," Carspecken said of the discovery....

2010 Feb 9. ARO confirms WISE Space Telescope Comet Discovery. Robert Holmes used the first ground based telescope, the ARO 0.81-m to confirm the first WISE space telescope comet discovery now known as COMET P/2010 B2 (WISE). Many large observatories attempted to confirm this discovery more than 7 days earlier including the Faulkes 2.0m telescope in Hawaii as well as the 0.81m telescope at ARO without success. However due to poor weather, ARO had to wait 7 more days to make their second attempt at the WISE discovery on 2010 02 07. Holmes and Harlan Devore located the target in ARO images at nearly the same time separated by about 800 miles. Two other telescopes also confirmed the WISE comet discovery including the 3.6-m telescope at Mauna Kea operated by A. Draginda and D.J. Tholen and the Spacewatch 1.8-m telescope at Kitt Peak operated by J.V. Scotti. For an animation of this discovery confirmation and the MPEC, see http://killerasteroidproject.org/wise_obs_page.htm

2010 Jan 14. Pennypacker Wins Janssen Prize for HOU. Berkeley Lab astrophysicist Carl Pennypacker — founder of Hands-On Universe (HOU), the award-winning international science education program — was awarded the Janssen Prize by the French Astronomical Society. Named after astronomer Pierre Jules César Janssen, founder of the Paris Meudon Observatory and co-discoverer of helium, the Janssen Prize is the society's highest award and is given every other year to a non-French scientist. Pennypacker was recognized for his work with HOU, a program that enables students to explore the cosmos via the Internet, working with real scientists and professional telescopes.

2009 Oct 30. From: Patrick Miller. Greetings from the International Astronomical Search Collaboration. The All-Texas Asteroid Search Campaign and NEO Confirmation Campaign are currently on hold. The weather has been overcast and raining for the past five nights at the ARI Observatory. The Full Moon occurs on Monday night so the likelihood remains slim that image sets will be available in the coming days. Should this change, you will be notified immediately.
Unfortunately astronomy is at the mercy of the weather and the Moon. For the past week it seems that both have conspired to slow down IASC and your students from making important discoveries and observations. But be patient...the situation should begin to improve in the coming week.
The following are the asteroid discoveries made so far during the current campaigns:
2009 TH2 - Dankov, Hsu, Chae, & Hennig
Thomas Jefferson HS VA 10/11/09
2009 TD2 - K. Dankov
Bulgarian Academy of Science Bulgaria 10/11/09
2009 TH5 - Dankov, Pannill, & Schmidt
Meredith College NC 10/11/09
2009 TS10 - Dankov, Pannill, & Schmidt
Meredith College NC 10/11/09
2009 UX2 - Dankov, Kirby, & Diaz
Ranger High School TX 10/18/09
2009 UA6 -Foglia, Anderson, McAbee, Craig, & Kilgo
May High School TX 10/18/09
2009 UZ5 -Dankov & Sawberger
Tarrant County CC TX 10/18/09
2009 UC18 - K. Dankov
Bulgarian Academy of Science Bulgaria 10/18/09
2009 UN14 - Dankov, Kirby, & Diaz
Ranger High School TX 10/18/09
2009 UM20 - K. Dankov
Bulgarian Academy of Science Bulgaria 10/25/09
Don't forget, too, that R. Watanabe from Shizuoka University (Japan) made an NEO confirmation of 2009 TA1 on October 11th and H. Chun from Cranston High School East (RI) made a virtual impactor observation of 2009 TE10 on October 18th.

2009 Oct 20. From: Patrick Miller. Greetings from the International Astronomical Search Collaboration
Congratulations go to D. Hsu, K. Chae, & L. Hennig from Thomas Jefferson High School (VA) for the assisted discovery of 2009 TH2. Also congratulations go to C. Pannill & B. Schmidt from Meredith College (NC) for the assisted discovery of 2009 TH5. Both of these objects are new Main Belt asteroids.
IASC has joined with the Sierra Stars Observatory Network to do follow-ups on original asteroid discoveries. The Minor Planet Center (Harvard) requires follow-ups within 7 days in order to receive credit for these discoveries. You can see how successful this has been since there have been three discoveries within the image sets from October 11th. During the previous campaign with 19 days of image sets, there were no discoveries!!

2009 Oct 13. From: Patrick Miller. IASC congratulations are in order for observations and discoveries:
--R. Watanage from Shizuoka University (Japan) made the confirmation of the near-Earth object (NEO) 2009 TA1. Along with K. Dankov from the Bulgarian Academy of Science, this student made an important observation confirming the orbit of this NEO.
--K. Dankov discovered two new Main Belt asteroids, 2009 TH2 and 2009 TD2.
--Students from Belmont HS, Cordova HS, Folsom Lake College Meredith College, ZSO Toruniu, Colleyville Heritage HS, and Tarrant County CC made NEO observations that were reported as part of the NASA Near-Earth Object Program (Jet Propulsion Laboratory).

2009 October. Web video on the Universe Quest after-school/summer program:

2009 June 26. Students, Faculty Recognized by NASA. Students at Folsom Lake College recently received NASA research awards for measuring Potentially Hazardous Asteroids for NASA and the Killer Asteroid Project. FLC Astronomy instructor Glenn Reagan led his class of students that included Cindy Terpe and Steve Kemppainen. Many teachers and students like Reagan, Terpe, and Kemppainen also had their names published at Harvard University for observations with exceptional scientific value to the astronomical community. Cindy Terpe won the award this year for the most student asteroid discoveries in the world with 4 discoveries.
Each of the students received NASA – Astronomical Research Institute award certificates this month for their research efforts over the school year. Folsom Lake College also received an engraved NASA award plaque that includes the lead instructor Glenn Reagan and each of the student names who participated in NASA’s Near Earth Object Observations Program and the Killer Asteroid Project.
"The students at Folsom Lake College downloaded our images from the Internet that were taken by powerful telescopes at our observatory that can see stars 10 million times fainter than you can see with your own eye", stated Robert Holmes, a research scientist for NASA’s Near Earth Object Observations Program. "Students in the Killer Asteroid Project made high quality measurements of these important objects that pose a possibility of striking the earth sometime in the future. Our goal in the Killer Asteroid Project is to measure these objects for NASA’s Near Earth Object Observations program and help protect the earth from a possible future asteroid or comet impact."...

June 2009. Video news report (from our local San Francisco Bay Area ABC station) on the HOU Universe Quest astronomy game development.

2009 May 15. Online games spark girls' interests in science & technology. By Robert Sanders, UC Berkeley Media Relations. Excerpt: BERKELEY — Ruby Knight and Tiffany Farmer, sixth and seventh grade Girl Scouts at the ASA Academy in West Oakland, ... Susan Murabona, an educator and astronomer in Nairobi, Kenya... Lech Mankiewicz, an astrophysicist in Warsaw, Poland ...all got together via the Internet earlier this month to begin assembling an online game that will help girls around the world explore the cosmos and perhaps steer them toward careers in software development and information technology. "The Universe Quest Game," an immersive game similar to the popular multi-user virtual world called "Second Life," is being made possible by a $1.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to the University of California, Berkeley. ...From his home in Warsaw, Mankiewicz coached Murabana, taking her step by step through the intricacies of using the telescope and acquiring images. Murabona then taught the girls to use a free French software program known as SalsaJ to combine three images, taken with red, green, and blue filters, to make a true color image of the galaxy.
... the girls are making great games, they're engaged, they are enthusiastic, they are learning things. ..."I think it is fantastic that girls our age get to make a game," said seventh grader Tiffany. ...So far, a dozen girls meet to work on the game two afternoons a week for two hours at the ASA Academy & Community Science Center, a small, urban, hands-on school that helps traditionally underrepresented youth prepare to move into the ever-changing scientific and technological world. The 3-D online environment the girls are now constructing will eventually be open to girls around the world to explore and build upon. See full article.

2009 May. From Dr. Roger Ferlet of EU-HOU, France HOU, and GHOU:
In the framework of the Czech Presidency of the European Union, a conference, Innovation and Creativity in the Lifelong Learning Programme: Create, Innovate and Cooperate, was held on 6 and 7 May 2009 in Prague. Part of the conference was dedicated to awarding outstanding European projects and best innovative practices which will serve as good motivating examples to wider public, in order to accomplish the goals set by European leaders in Lisbon to become "the most dynamic and competitive knowledge-based economy in the world" by 2010 in the field of Education and Training. In the category "Information and Communication Technologies", our project, Hands-On Universe, Europe – Bringing frontline interactive astronomy to the classroom, has been awarded the silver medal by the European Commission. It was given to me by the Czech Minister of Education, Youth and Sports, Ondrej Liška and the European Commissioner for Education, Training, Culture and Youth, Ján Figel.

2009 Mar 11. The latest round of virtual impactor observations (VIOs) and observations of near-Earth objects (NEOs) are now fully listed at the IASC web site. Go to http://iasc.hsutx.edu/index_files/Page786.htm for the complete list. To date there have been 4 Main Belt asteroid discoveries, 1 NEO discovery, 7 VIOs, 4 NEO confirmations, and 148 NEO observations. The NEO observations are reported to the Minor Planet Center (Harvard) and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (Pasadena, CA) as part of the NASA Near-Earth Object Program. This is truly an impressive list of discoveries and observations!!
Dr. Patrick Miller

2009 Feb 2 Patrick Miller of the International Astronomical Search Collaboration (IASC) reports that Steven Kirby, a high school science teacher at Ranger High School (Ranger, TX), discovered a near-Earth object during the Texas Region 14 Big Country Math & Science Symposium. To be more precise, it was co-discovered by the ARI Observatory director Bob Holmes, Steven Kirby, and Kolyo Dankov (a graduate student at the Bulgarian Academy of Science and a participant of the IASC NEO Confirmation Campaign). This is the first time anyone in IASC has discovered an asteroid crossing or near Earth's orbit. Two other observatories have confirmed the sighting and the orbit for this object is being built by the Minor Planet Center at Harvard - http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/mpec/K09/K09C09.html. It is not unusual to discover a Main Belt asteroid because they number in the hundreds of thousands. The NEOs number in the thousands, and are a much rarer find. Bob Holmes of the Astronomical Research Institute (ARI) observatory adds: "This is not just and NEO. You might be interested to know that the discovery is a 'Virtual Impactor.' ...It was placed on the NASA/JPL risk page...." This discovery has received national attention on both the Sky & Telescope and Universe Today web sites. For more information, you can check out the story on the Universe Today site. This asteroid is 0.3 km in size and in 2042 will pass within 32,000 km of Earth (5.5 Earth radii), and even closer in 2046. Keep in mind that 32,000 km is actually closer to Earth than the geosynchronous satellites. At 0.3 km in size, it is as large as 3 football fields, and has a mass of 3.5 x 1010 kg. If it were to hit the Earth it would release the energy equivalent to 1000 MT of TNT (i.e., 1000 simultaneous hydrogen bomb explosions). So...you never know what your students may discover as they analyze the many image sets available in their school folders.

Nov 2008 The number of new asteroid discoveries remains at 23 but the list of NEO observations is long and includes many of IASC students. The current campaign continues until December 5, 2008, and we expect still more original discoveries and important contributions to the measurements of the impact threatening near-Earth objects.

2008 Jul 2 HOU/Spitzer Student Project: Alekzandir Morton and Thomas Travagli presented their research on determining the redshift of S5 0716+714 at the California State Science Fair and were awarded first place in the Senior Division of Physics and Astronomy. They were mentored by SSC scientist Mark Lacy. The students were awarded a $1000 scholarship each. Articles about them were published by the Contra Costa Times and in the Antioch Press. John Michael Santiago, who assisted with the data reduction on the WZ Sge project, received a 4th place award at the Contra Costa Science and Engineering Fair. ---Jeff Adkins [HOU teacher]

2008 April 18 Patrick Miller reports that so far in the International Asteroid Search Campaign (IASC), concluding Friday, May 2, 2008, students found 6 new asteroids, 6 VIO (virtual impactor observations), 4 published NEO observations, and 26 unpublished NEO confirmations. Congratulations to VIII LO, Katowice (Poland), the UAI Minor Planets (Italy) and students from China Hands-On Universe for the discovery of two new Main Belt asteroids!!

Asteroid K08GB1Z
S. Foglia; UAI Minor Planets (Italy)
B. Lanuszny, Z. Adamus, K.Gibinski, & A.Mucha; VIII LO, Katowice (Poland)

Asteroid K08GB1Y
S. Foglia; UAI Minor Planets (Italy)
M. Zhou; China Hands-On Universe

2008 Jun 13 Update From: Patrick Miller: We have a list of schools participating in the 2007-2008 asteroid campaigns (plus one pilot supernova campaign). We've changed the name of IASC from International Asteroid Search Campaign to International Astronomical Search Collaborative (still calling it "Isaac"). The plan is to completely develop the supernova search campaign and including search campaigns for Kuiper Belt objects and comets.
Since October 2006 at the start of IASC, 97 schools have participated from 9 countries. The countries include China, Germany, Italy, Japan, Morocco, Poland, Portugal, Russia, and United States.
Students from these schools have discovered 82 asteroids, made 2 comet confirmations, 6 virtual impactor observations, and hundreds of near-Earth object confirmations. As far as the most number of discoveries, I don't have this recorded but I believe the schools from Poland hold this title. Some schools have discovered as many as 4 asteroids, as I recall.

Dec 2007
International Asteroid Search Campaign

Teachers and students have successfully completed the Fall 2007 IASC search campaigns. There were a total of 38 new Main Belt asteroids discovered, with 2 more waiting to be announced....2007 VSK1 and 2007 WG00. There were 24 schools participating from 7 countries (Germany, Italy, Japan, Morocco, Poland, Portugal, and United States)...15 were high schools and 9 were colleges. The Spring 2008 campaigns start on February 1, 2008, will include a total 9 countries including China and Russia. See more details on the Asteroid Discoverers.

16 July 2007. Gruber Cosmology Prize.

HOU Co-director and founder Carl Pennypacker has shared a prize with members of the team he helped found that led to the discovery of evidence for Dark Energy. Please see:

1. LBNL article that refers to Carl as the Supernova Cosmology Project (SCP) co-founder.
   
2. 2007 Gruber Cosmology Prize Press Release with a list of the SCP tea

May 10-11, 2007. Hands-On-Universe Holds Teachers’ Workshop in Kenya. Excerpt: For high school students in the Republic of Kenya in Eastern Africa, star-gazing was enhanced by Hands-On-Universe (HOU), .... On May 10th and 11th, HOU held an Internet teleconference workshop for nearly a dozen teachers at Kenya High School, a national residency school for girls. This is the first HOU workshop to be held on the continent of Africa.
“There are certain images and concepts that transcend backgrounds and capture everyone's imaginations. Turning a telescope to the sky opens that view to everyone and spurs them to learn more. The HOU program provides an excellent opportunity to continue and spread this activity and interest,” said George Smoot, an astrophysicist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory... who shared the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics. Full article at Berkeley Center for Cosmological Physics and workshop movie (330 MB)

March 2007. You are welcome to visit the EU-HOU web site and download the Windows Media movie of the Lunar - Saturn occultation of March 2, 2007. See also Saturn occultation of 22 May 2007 at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3nk6wvnrCA

--Lech Mankiewicz

Spring 2006. HOU teacher Jeff Adkins and students in the Antioch ESPACE Academy at Deer Valley High School (DVHS) have observed Active Galactic Nuclei on the Spitzer Infrared Space Telescope as well as with ground based scopes. Project results are online at http://www.espaceacademy.com (click on the Spitzer Space Telescope picture).
DVHA students also did well at their county science fair. See details on the HOU Teacher News page and the ESPACE press release page. Many thanks to all of the programs from NOAO, the Spitzer Science Center, HOU, and elsewhere that allowed our students to succeed.

HOU was featured in a report on the Internet Scout project of National Science Digital Library (NSDL).

From Janesville Gazette article: "Observatory moves to new mission of drawing students into astronomy" by Chris Schultz, July 3, 2006
  "Daniel Pryke and brothers Orion and Rowan Danou, 5 and 3, watched with awe as Yerkes Observatory's 40-inch refracting telescope swung into operation.
  "Yerkes is now a key part of Hands-On Universe . . .
' This is not education in which people come in and lecture in a classroom,' [Yerkes Science Director Kyle Cudworth] said. 'We're helping students work with real data.' "

From Janesville Gazette article about HOU/Yerkes Observatory: "Yerkes' star still shines", by Chris Schultz, July 3, 2006.
  "In March, Yerkes confirmed the discovery of a supernova in a distant galaxy that's part of the Ursa Major constellation, also know as the Big Dipper...Now named Supernova 2006bg, the image was taken by Robert Holmes . . . Holmes sends his images to Yerkes for use in the Hands-On Universe program, an education program that gets raw astronomical data into the hands of high school science students.
 [Yerkes staff member Vivian Hoette] and others at Yerkes are working on blending research with hands-on-and eyes-on-education, so each new discovery may also create a new insight for students and teachers."

30 Jan 2005. New Focus for Yerkes
Excerpt: One outreach worker, Vivian Hoette, is involved with a group called Hands-On Universe.
    On a chilly moonlit night last year, Hoette hosted science teachers John Bruss from Deerfield High School in Illinois and Frank Mills from Palombi Middle School in Lake Villa, Ill.  They were using a smaller, 24-inch reflecting telescope at Yerkes to take pictures of galaxies and nebula and learn more about the science of astronomy.
    During the evening, Hoette's cell phone rang. Hughes Pack, a science teacher from Mount Herman boarding school in Northfield, Mass., asked her to photograph an asteroid while he conducted an evening astronomy class a thousand miles away.
    In less than half an hour, Hoette shot a multiple-picture sequence of the dim but fast-moving asteroid and uploaded the images to the Hands-On Universe Web site.
    Pack said his students love this type of lesson.  "This is real time.  Look what happens in 20 minutes.  The students really like to see things change and move."

March 2005. Small Telescope Parallax Group, which includes several HOU teacher leaders, looks for asteroids that come relatively close to Earth, whose parallax (and hence distance) can be determined by equipment available to amateur astronomers.  See results for asteroid 1998WT.
HOU collaborators in the Small Telescope Parallax Group: Vivian Hoette, Hands-On Universe;  Kaoru Kimura, Riken Institute of Japan;  Mike Ford, Elk Creek Observatory;  Lech Mankiewicz, Center for Theoretical Physics of Poland.

2004-2005. Congratulations to HOU teacher, Fred Page, for being named Secondary Teacher of the Year for Detroit Public Schools!

October 8, 2004. Science Magazine, Vol. 306, Issue 5694, 216-217.   Robotic Telescopes Give Kids a Cosmic Classroom.  HOU receives some nice publicity in this article on robotic telescopes.  Yerkes Observatory is mentioned, along with our rapidly evolving network of telescopes.  The article's main focus is on the Faulkes Telescopes, a set of two telescopes, one in Hawaii and one in Australia.  HOU teachers and collaborators have used the Faulkes on a limited basis already and hope to expand, somewhat, usage of these good instruments over the next few years.

March 11, 2004. Education Extra: Science classes looking up. By Walter Yost -- Sacramento Bee Bee Staff Writer. At the start of every astronomy class, [HOU TRA] Glenn Reagan's students scramble to computers to gaze at the latest breathtaking images from Mars: solar eclipses of the planet's two moons, the 100-mile-wide Gusev Crater, a dusty blue Martian sunset. "I've been teaching for 17 years, and nothing has been as interesting to students," said the Cordova High School instructor. ..."The photographs we're getting now are just beyond description," he said. Reagan expects Mars mania will carry over to upcoming space events, including June 4, when Venus crosses the sun, and July 1, when the Cassini spacecraft enters Saturn's orbit. "I think it's great that our generation will be the first to explore Mars," said Natasha Cabrera, a senior in Reagan's class. "If we find evidence of life on Mars, maybe we could find something about where we came from." ...Students like those in Reagan's class are also benefiting from impressive new technology, such as computerized astronomy. They're able to use image-processing software developed by "Hands-On Universe" at the Lawrence Hall of Science at UC Berkeley to request, receive and process their own astronomical images for projects like asteroid searches. In addition, they are communicating with other student astronomers via the Internet. Currently, Reagan's class is collaborating with peers at a North Carolina campus on a project measuring the mass of Saturn....

June 23-27, 2003 HOU Annual Conference 2003 was at Yerkes Observatory and Aurora College.

June 13-20, 2003. Wisconsin DPI Education Forum, Volume 6, Number 37. Students from WCBVI travel to Yerkes Observatory. Visit gives students and staff experience with equipment for SEE Project. Students and staff members from the Wisconsin Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired (WCBVI) joined members of the Williams Bay Lions Club for the presentation of a special graphics printer and tour of the Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay June 12. Summary article archived at http://www.dpi.state.wi.us/seachange/archive/0122.html

June 13, 2003. Janesville Gazette. Blind students use other senses to explore space. By Chris Schultz/Gazette Staff. WILLIAMS BAY- None of the students had been in an observatory before. It's a fair bet most have never seen starlight, either. Seven students from the Wisconsin Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired in Janesville visited the University of Chicago Yerkes Observatory on Thursday for a presentation, a tour and pizza-but also to experience a universe that most of us know nothing about.

May, 1999—HOU Receives $2.5 Million NSF Grant—The grant from the National Science Foundation, awarded to UC Berkeley's Lawrence Hall of Science - a national leader in creating science and math curricula for schools - will allow the HOU program to expand from 60,000 students today to an estimated 300,000 in five years. See UC Berkeley press release

1998—HOU teacher wins McAuliff award.

1998—HOU students discover a Kuiper Belt asteroid.

1997—HOU in a White House Press Release (1997)