SFB 881 Outreach Activities
Educational activities
As part of the SFB's educational activities we offer workshops for high-school students as well as week-long internships ("BoGy") at the Haus der Astronomie. Currently under development is a "Milky Way Kit" with classroom-ready hands-on materials for use in schools. Milky Way Kits will be available for borrowing by interested high-school teachers.
Workshops take place in the seminar rooms and main lecture hall of the Haus der Astronomie. They cover numerous SFB-related topics, notably the structure and length scales of the Milky Way, an introduction to how to characterize stars (stellar parameters), star formation and evolution (including hands-on exercises for the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram; see image on the left), the role of infrared observations for Milky Way astronomy, mass estimates for the black hole at the galactic center, as well as the search for embedded open star cluster in the disc of our home galaxy.
The Milky Way Kit (cf. the image of a prototype on the left) is an easy way of integrating SFB topics in school, notably in the teaching of physics and of interdisciplinary science courses (such as NWT in Baden-Württemberg). The kit includes instructions for building a scale model of the Milky Way, a do-it-yourself pop-up scale model of the Local Group, a board game introducing the Milky Way's different stellar populations, components for an H-R-Diagram that can be constructed on any magnetic surface, and a model of the center of the Milky Way featuring infrared diodes as part of a demonstration of how astronomers use infrared radiation to peer beyond the dust clouds obscuring the stars that orbit the Milky Way's central black hole.
Contact:
Dr. Cecilia Scorza, Haus der Astronomie
scorza@hda-hd.de
Tel. (06221) 528-291
Outreach and public relations
Project Z1 (Public outreach) supports SFB scientists in representing the SFB at meetings and in public. To this end, we offer exhibition modules (currently: a module giving an overview of SFB research; under construction: an SFB-themed eye-catcher) and related materials (under development: a brochure and, in late 2013, a special edition of the German popular astronomy magazine "Sterne und Weltraum" featuring SFB reviews and research).
One of our main goals is to bring SFB science to a younger audience (cf. description of educational activities, below).
Contact:
Dr. Markus Pössel, Haus der Astronomie
poessel@hda-hd.de
Tel. (06221) 528-261
Dr. Guido Thimm, Zentrum für Astronomie der Universität Heidelberg
thimm@ari.uni-heidelberg.de
Tel. (06221) 54-1805
