Fred Watson Masterclass
Resources
Find out more about Fred Watson at his home page on the Anglo-Australian Observatory website.
This resource was produced by the Centre for Learning Innovation (www.cli.nsw.edu.au) for students studying Physics in Stage 6.
Science Talk includes interviews with a number of leading Australian and international scientists from many different areas of work.
Other resources
Images
- David Malin is a world-famous astro-photographer. Many of his images have been taken through the AAO, where he was a photographic scientist–astronomer until 2001.
Interactive simulations
- WorldWide Telescope is a Microsoft initiative that allows you to explore the heavens from your computer screen. (Your computer needs to have .net software installed to run this.)
- The Faulkes Telescope ASISTM Project (FTAP) is an Australian school-based program enabling students to interact with telescopes across the world.
- The Mini Spectroscopy page, developed by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics through its MicroObservatory Online Telescopes site, lets you view spectra from a variety of sources. (DET users will need to log in again to run this Java applet.)
- The Australia Telescope Outreach and Education program offers a range of educational resources.
- See the Gemini Twin telescopes that Fred mentions in his talk: the Gemini South telescope is located in the Andes mountains in northern Chile.
- Go to the Bad Astronomy blog for some different ideas about astronomical objects.
- To find out about another world-class Australian astronomer, see the home page of Bryan Gaensler.
- To look at a huge range of X-ray images, go to the Chandra X-ray Observatory page.
- For teaching resources from NASA, see the NASA - Educators site.
Planetary probes and their findings
- Read news about the Phoenix Mars Lander at the Science Daily website.
- The Mars rovers, Opportunity and Spirit, have also uncovered plenty of evidence of past water on Mars, though most of it is not very spectacular. This Mars Rovers press release from NASA has some useful information.
- NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor site includes some interesting information on Mars.
- Fred mentions icy Europa, a moon of Jupiter. Find out more information from the NASA World Book: Europa page.
- The Square Kilometre Array Project (ASKAP) Walk About website has a simulated 3D walk around the proposed site for the ASKAP project (requires an installation and screen resolution set to 1024 × 768).
- Enceladus and Titan are mentioned by Fred in his interview. Try the links, which lead to to NASA’s Cassini-Huygens Mission site, to get more information about these two icy moons of Saturn.
- Is there a possibility of life on Titan? NASA’s Cassini-Huygens Multimedia site has a fascinating computer animation of the descent of the Huygens lander onto Titan's surface.
- Visit the Cassini-Huygens home page for a lot of fascinating information about Saturn and its ring and moon system.