Three High School Teachers Bring Subaru Telescope's Big Data to Their Classrooms

Three High School Teachers Bring Subaru Telescope’s Big Data to Their Classrooms

Presenter: Kumiko Usuda-Sato, Subaru Telescope, National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, USA

Collaborators: Tadashi Hara (Toyo University, Japan), Tamiki Togashi (Saitama Prefectural Kasukabe High School, Japan), Yuichiro Hiratsuka (Saitama Prefectural Yorii-Johoku High School, Japan), and Akihiko Tomita (Wakayama University, Japan).

This was a poster presented at the 4th Shaw-IAU Workshop on Astronomy for Education, organised by the IAU Office of Astronomy for Education (OAE, http//astro4edu.org).

The Subaru Telescope is a large optical-infrared telescope near the summit of Maunakea, Hawaii. The telescope conducted an extensive survey called the Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) Subaru Strategic Program using the ultrawide-field imaging camera HSC. The big survey data is partially open to the public, and anyone can freely explore the vast cosmic images on the hscMap website. The three high-school science teachers (Hara, Togashi, and Hiratsuka) in Japan developed educational material using hscMap to bring one of the world’s highest-quality astronomical data to their classrooms, including at a University. According to a questionnaire after Hara’s lecture at a teacher-training course at Toyo University, many trainee students were interested in using hscMap when they became teachers.

About the 4th Shaw-IAU Workshop:

The topic for this year’s Shaw-IAU Workshop on Astronomy for Education is ‘Leveraging the potential of astronomy in formal education’ and is scheduled to run 15 to 17 November 2022 as a fully virtual event on Hopin as in previous years. This year’s Shaw-IAU Workshop focuses on the role of astronomy in the core regions of formal, primary and secondary, education: How do we teach astronomy as its own subject? What is the role of astronomy in teaching physics or chemistry – or in communicating such a central future topic as climate change? In sessions marked with a * we aim to hear specifically from teachers. We also address the question of how to approach those who set the framework for teaching: How can you get your administration, or at a much higher level: your education ministry, to listen to you? Last but not least we look at how to bridge the divide between the fundamentals that are commonly taught in school and results from cutting-edge research, which tend to be fascinating to students and the general public alike. he workshop was organised by the IAU Office of Astronomy for Education (http://astro4edu.org). More details can be found on: https://astro4edu.org/shaw-iau/4th-shaw-iau-workshop/

Keep up to date with future Shaw-IAU Workshops and other opportunities at the IAU Office of Astronomy for Education by joining our mailing list https://astro4edu.org/mailing-list/ Follow the IAU OAE on Twitter and Facebook under @astro4edu