Galaxies and Cosmology

Labs

    • Redshift: Compare star and galaxy redshifts from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey using SkyServer and Voyages.

    • Distances to Galaxies: use Hubble's Law to determine the distance to several galaxy clusters in the SDSS.

    • Dark Matter: Examine the evidence for Dark Matter in NGC 2742.

    • Galaxy Classification: Classify images of galaxies, multiple versions.

    • Hubble's Law : This is *the* Hubble Law lab in which the student measures distances, redshifts, and then plots them.

    • The Expanding (Balloon) Universe : Use a balloon to explore the expanding universe and Hubble's Law.

Shorter Activities and Resources (linked below)

    • Expanding Universe of Students.docx: Why the statement "the farther things are, the faster they are moving away" implies that the Universe is expanding.

    • Short Questions About Galaxies: Metals, HII regions, 21 cm emission, Pop 1 and Pop 2 stars.

    • GalaxyCrash.doc: Crash Galaxies together and create some familiar forms. Depends on web resources that are almost certainly out of date, consider using Universe Sandbox if no better options exist.

    • Particle Soup (& worksheet): Nucleosynthesis: The student explores how helium was made in the Big Bang.

    • The Curvature of Space (& worksheet): Thinking about the curvature of our own universe by looking at some examples from other "universes."