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With an official public launch later in Spring 2025, the Smithsonian DataLabs project brings together one-of-a-kind FREE learning resources from the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. Your students can investigate exoplanets with DIY Planet Search, and explore light, color, and spectroscopy with the Spectrum Lab.
With an official public launch later in Spring 2025, the Smithsonian DataLabs project brings together one-of-a-kind FREE learning resources from the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. Your students can investigate exoplanets with DIY Planet Search, and explore light, color, and spectroscopy with the Spectrum Lab.
The Smithsonian DataLabs — Spectrum Lab and DIY Planet Search — are two different technology-enabled instructional modules that, over 3-8 class periods, engage high school and Astro 101 students in authentic investigations using real data and online data visualization tools. Developed with funding from the National Science Foundation, the Smithsonian Institution, and NASA, these data-centric explorations incorporate exciting trans-disciplinary content connections from across the Smithsonian.
Explore this site to learn more about our two DataLabs: Spectrum Lab and DIY Planet Search
The Center for Astrophysics (CfA) is a collaboration between Harvard & the Smithsonian to ask and answer the greatest unresolved questions about the nature of the universe. DataLabs draws on the experts and the science of the CfA to bring to your classrooms!
The DataLabs
The DataLabs
Engage Students with Real Data
Promote science practices associated with asking questions of data, and analyzing messy data to find a signal in the noise.
Advance NGSS Vision of 3D Science Learning
Students learn science as they do science, encountering and applying important concepts that cut across STEM disciplines
Support Connected Learning to Increase Relevance & Equity
Integrate multidisciplinary Smithsonian content and resources to optimize opportunities for students to make connections between the science they are learning and their own prior knowledge, interests, and everyday experiences. Real data, real science, as explored by real people
The Spectrum Lab is an online data visualization tool and associated set of investigations that supports students in learning about light, color, and the electromagnetic spectrum.
Students will:
Do hands-on experiments (with low-cost classroom materials), such as creating a simple spectrograph
Explore authentic spectral data for a variety of different objects, including nature and artwork
In DIY Planet Search, classrooms use the MicroObservatory Robotic Telescopes to gather, analyze, and interpret their own observational data to search for the signals of planets orbiting distant stars - so-called exoplanet transits.
Students will:
Do hands-on experiments (with low-cost classroom materials), such as modeling an exoplanet transit
Use data tools to analyze observed and model exoplanet transits
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