Overview: Students develop a basic understanding of light as a flow of particles from sources, including the relationship between flux, luminosity, and distance. They learn to work with images using basic image processing techniques, and use images to connect to and calculate with the ideas of flux and luminosity they’ve just developed. Students then introduce color as a refinement of their model of light. They extend this idea of color to “colors” our eyes cannot see (i.e. infrared light, X-ray light). They learn to process X-ray images from Chandra. Students finally use color in two ways, just as professional astronomers do: to indicate intensity (“false color”) and to indicate energy (“true color”).
| ACTIVITIES | TOPICS |
|---|---|
| Activity 1 | Developing a model of light |
| Activity 2 | Introduction to image processing |
| Activity 3 | Developing and using flux / luminosity relationship |
| Activity 4 | Measuring color |
| Activity 5 | Colors that humans cannot see |
| Activity 6 | “True” X-ray color image of Orion |
| Activity 7 | Wrap-up project: Orion Nebula |
