Local educators travel to Arizona for an astronomical adventure

Wisconsin Teachers (left to right) Brandon Olszewski, Evan Gnam, Derek Engebretsen, and UW astronomer Eric Hooper inspect an image of the Owl Nebula, a dying star, they took with the WIYN 0.9-meter telescope. Photo: John Heasley.

Astronomy Department researchers expanded the scope of their ongoing program to involve K-12 educators in research observing runs at telescopes on Kitt Peak, Arizona.

This past May, four Wisconsin teachers joined UW-Madison astronomers Eric Hooper and Marsha Wolf at the WIYN 0.9-meter and 3.5-meter telescopes.

The Wisconsin teachers represented the first high school teachers, as well as the first pre-service teachers, to experience the WIYN in Arizona.

The local teachers included:

• Evan Gnam, a former UW-Madison graduate student in astronomy, who now teaches math, physics, and astronomy at Madison East High School.
• John Heasley, an English teacher at Richland Center High School, who teaches a course on literature involving Mars.  He is also an avid amateur astronomer and a NASA Solar System Ambassador.
• Derek Engebretsen and Brandon Olszewski, both UW-Madison undergraduate preservice teachers, who trained at Madison East.  Engebretsen just graduated and will begin teaching in the fall, and Olszewski will graduate next spring.  Both also taught in the UW-Madison Physics Learning Center.

The teachers noticed Bucky representing UW-Madison on one of the instruments attached to the WIYN 3.5-meter telescope. Photo: John Heasley.

Despite a tight schedule, the teachers had time to use the electronic detector on the 0.9-m telescope to make images of some of their favorite objects in the sky such as nebulae formed by dying stars, globular and open star clusters, distant galaxies like the Whirlpool Galaxy and even clusters of galaxies.

The impact of the trip will spread far beyond this summer and the four teachers.

Gnam and Heasley have already enthralled their students with tales of the trip.

Gnam is processing data for all four to use and Heasley has talked to an amateur group about the experience.  Both are planning activities comparing true and false color using the data they took, plus Engebretsen and Olszewski are planning how to incorporate astronomy into their future physics teaching.

The trip was made possible by the support of Astronomy Department Board of Visitors, Professor Andy Sheinis and Madison East and Richland Center High Schools.

UW-Madison will continue to use the 0.9-meter telescope for educational purposes this summer, as Hooper will lead its contribution to the Astronomy Camp program, which will be resident on Kitt Peak this June for only the second time in its more than two decade history.