IBDP Group 4 Sciences

Notes from an astronomy course at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (USA). "In this semester of Astronomy we shall concern ourselves primarily with the Solar System. As an introduction to that, we shall consider the historical development of our modern picture of the Solar System."

There were 81 videos at time of posting

Musical Solar System - based on real orbital frequencies. It's like a soothing music box made of the planets in our solar system. Awesome.

The Exoplanet Data Explorer is an interactive table and plotter for exploring and displaying data from the Exoplanet Orbit Database. The Exoplanet Orbit Database is a carefully constructed compilation of quality, spectroscopic orbital parameters of exoplanets orbiting normal stars from the peer-reviewed literature, and updates the Catalog of nearby exoplanets.

This animated GIF shows images from the Hubble telescope and is useful for demonstrating the vast size of the universe, the number of stars it contains, and the possible number of planets out there.

You can participate in a crowd-sourced search for exoplanets (planets orbiting stars other than our Sun) by looking at data from NASA's Kepler satellite. Wicked cool and participatory science.

Explore and animate a 3-D view of the solar system. View Saturn, Jupiter, and their moons as you'd see them through a telescope. Quickly find when Jupiter's Great Red Spot is visible.

Find past and future moon phases with this moon phases calendar/moon schedule. You can set the month and year for hundreds of years.

The Interactive NGC Catalog Online This is the interactive NGC (and IC, and Messier) catalog atSEDS, based on the famous NGC 2000.0 by R.W. Sinnott of Sky Publishing Corp., who also created the electronic version used by this online service (thanks toSky Publishing for permitting us this kind of use). An excellent reference.

THE MESSIER CATALOG Index of Messier objects with image icons or in text mode! Great tool for reference while observing through telescopes.

This site uses your computer's location to determine what the night sky looks like. Simple, kind of cool. Worth a look for quick reference.

A browser-based virtual planetarium of stars and planets, customizable to any location and time. LOADS of fun. Easy to get lost in this one.

Download maps of the sky for wherever and whenever you are.

Excerpt from Thinking Through Project-Based Learning: Guiding Deeper Inquiry, published by Corwin, 2013. When students engage in quality projects, they develop knowledge, skills, and dispositions that serve them in the moment and in the long term. Unfortunately, not all projects live up to their potential. Sometimes the problem lies in the design process.