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 Depends on web resources that are almost certainly out of date, consider using Universe Sandbox if no better options exist.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."