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Milky Way Kit  —   Workshops  —   Downloads  —   Short Films  —   Contact

Our main goals are to communicate the fascination and relevance of Galactic astronomy to the general public, and to support scientists in representing the SFB at meetings and in public. In particular, we aim at bringing SFB science to a younger audience and informing young people about the associated career opportunities.

The Milky Way Kit and some of its content
Students working on the magnetic Hertzsprung-Russell diagram

Educational Activities

Milky Way Kit

We developed the "Milky Way Kit", a collection of hands-on activities aimed at middle school and high school students. The kit features e.g. a magnetic do-it-yourself Hertzsprung-Russell diagram (printed canvas for use on magnetic blackboards), different scale models, activities related to stellar populations, an easy to use USB-spektrometer, as well as a interactive magnitude model.

Workshops

As part of our educational activities we offer workshops, mainly addressed at middle and high school students, available in German and English. They take place the Haus der Astronomie. in Heidelberg and can be attended by any class group. The workshops cover SFB related topics and focus on the stars of the Milky Way, giving an introduction into relevant stellar parameters, star formation and evolution and the Hertzsprung Russel diagram and its implications for astronomy. Additional workshops e.g. on the role of infrared observations for Milky Way astronomy are also available.

Thesis work for physics teacher students

We also offer supervision of thesis works ("Wissenschaftliche Abschlussarbeit") by physics teacher students at Heidelberg University within the framework of the SFB. The thesis work includes both an scientific part and an educational part, where the produced scientific result is implemented into a school project.

So far three theses works habe been developed within this collaboration:
2012 in relation to the age determination for the metal-poorest stars of the Milky Way (in cooperation with sub-project A4),
2013 with educational material related to the search for open star clusters and its implications for the formation of the galactic disc (in cooperation with sub-project B5),
and 2015 on the chemical composition of stars in globular clusters (in cooperation with sub-project A8).
All three were co-advised by SFB outreach scientist Cecilia Scorza and SFB members (S. Röser, N. Christlieb, and A. Koch, respectively).

Interested physics teacher students (Lehramtsstudierende Physik an der Universität Heidelberg) are encouraged to contact us if you are interested in a thesis work within the SFB framework.


SFB outreach scientist Stefan Jordan at the Gaia Live event 2014

Outreach to schools also includes direct visits by SFB (outreach) scientists to Milky Way Ambassador schools, as well as a very special event related to the Gaia mission: In collaboration with ESA, we organized the German part of a Europe-wide live event for schools, which included a direct link to ESA scientists and engineers working on the Gaia mission. Our local node of this event was attended by 300 pupils between the ages of 15 and 17, and included presentation by Cecilia Scorza and Stefan Jordan s well as by SFB scientist Coryn Bailer-Jones (touching upon sub-projects B5 and B9). The event is an example of a more general fruitful outreach collaboration between our SFB and the outreach team for Gaia-DPAC, the consortium tasked with analysing Gaia data.

Materials for Download

 

Public Outreach

Outreach for the general public is provided in several ways, including public talks, print products, explanatory videos and visualisations, special events and several popular science articles. In the following a short overview about past activities is given:

Public Lectures


SFB 881 edition of the "Astronomy on a Sunday before noon" popular science talk series

Numerous public talks on SFB related topics were given throughout the last years. For instance, the 2017 edition of the popular pubic talk series "Astronomy on a Sunday before noon" was dedicated to SFB research, and consisted of five talks by SFB scientists (Hans-Walter Rix, Sabine Reffert, Rüdiger Pakmor, Andreas Just, Ralf Klessen) related to various subprojects. More information about the series can be found here.

Additional talks by SFB scientists were given at the university anniversary talk series "Universum für alle" in 2012, and continuously at the popular "Fascination Astronomy" series at the Haus der Astronomie. An overview about the talks can be found below.

Print Materials


Sterne und Weltraum cover from August 2017, referencing the lead article written by N. Christlieb.

Several popular science articles have been published in Germany's most popular astronomy magazine Sterne und Weltraum:


GEO kompakt, edition no 39, featuring SFB scientist Hans-Walter Rix talking about his galactic research

In June 2014 SFB PI Prof. Hans-Walter Rix prominently featured in a GEO KOMPAKT edition No. 39, talking about his galactic research.

Additional articles explaining the Gaia space mission and its importance for galactic science are listed here:

Special Events

Several special events highlighting the SFB and its research took place in the last years:

Exhibitions


Infoboard and Gaia model currently on tour with the Einstein Inside exhibition

Currently, a 1-to-10-scaled model of the Gaia satellite and a large infoboard (240 cm times 240 cm) presenting the SFB's central theme of "local cosmology" are traveling Germany as part of the Einstein inside traveling exhibition, a collaboration between numerous institutes supported by BMBF and the WE Heraeus foundation. So far the exhibition was hosted at the following locations:
26.09.2016 – 04.11.2016 Kirchhoff-Institut für Physik, Universität Heidelberg
09.11.2016 – 23.12.2016 Goethe-Universität Frankfurt
11.02.2017 – 23.04.2017 Didaktikzentrum M!ND, Würzburg
01.09.2017 – 01.11.2017 Deutsches Museum, Bonn
23.11.2017 – 06.01.2018 Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften, Hamburg
12.01.2018 – 08.04.2018 Planetarium Bochum
13.04.2018 - 23.10.2018 Jahrtausendturm im Elbauenpark Magdeburg

Additional exhibition elements include a back-lit SFB Milky Way model as part of the permanent exhibition at the European Southern Observatory's new visitor's center and planetarium located in Garching close to Munich, the ESO Supernova.

SFB content will be included in yet another traveling exhibition, which is under construction at Haus der Astronomie for Explore Science 2018 in Mannheim, funded by the Klaus Tschira Foundation.
Hands-on experiments based on the Milky Way Kit were already featured at two large-scale Explore Science family science fair events organized by the Klaus Tschira Foundation in Luisenpark in Mannheim: In 2012, we presented the astronomical distance measurements central to our knowledge of our cosmic neighbourhood at the mathematics-themed edition of Explore Science, which was attended by more than 56,000 visitors. In 2014, we returned to Explore Science with an exhibit about the Milky Way as an environment for habitable planets, and the variety of planets within our home Galaxy, suitable to that year's theme of biological and environmental diversity, attracting more than 43,000 visitors.
We also used our exhibits to present the SFB at the national conference of the German astronomical society (AG) in Tübingen in September 2013.

Videos and Visualisations

Contact

Dr. Renate Hubele, Astronomisches Rechen-Institut am Zentrum für Astronomie der Universität Heidelberg & Haus der Astronomie
hubele(at)hda-hd.de, Tel. (06221) 528-291

Prof. Dr. Stefan Jordan, Astronomisches Rechen-Institut am Zentrum für Astronomie der Universität Heidelberg
jordan(at)ari.uni-heidelberg.de, Tel. (06221) 54-1842

Dr. Markus Pössel, Haus der Astronomie
poessel(at)hda-hd.de, Tel. (06221) 528-261 

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