The following (emails) were written by members of the Astronomy and Astrophysics, Summer 2000 during the second day of the program. Some elements may have been removed for various reasons, but the text that remains is in the student's own words.
Learned how to convert coordinates onto galaxsee and make a model of the big dipper. also learned
about the life cycle of a star.
-Dayu
In the past two days I have learned alot about astronomy and astrophysics. Today I learned about a star's life cycle and about how smaller mass stars live longer than larger mass stars. I also learned about stellar evolution, parallaxes and converting parallaxes, RA's and DEC's into coordinates. I am really enjoying the workshops and looking forward to tomorrow.
Today's class was very interesting. We learned about the different properties and masses of stars. Also, we learned about the Main Sequence, which is the dividing line between the color of the stars(if below line: dimer than normal[inferred]; above line:very bright[ultra violent]). We learned about RE and Dec, which deal with equations,etc.
We also learned about the Milky Way and it's conponents. Last but not least, I learned about the
many Spherical Components. I really enjoyed today's class.
-Le'Roy
Looking at the lifecycles of stars was really fun. the HR diagram was pretty interesting. the
milkyway activity was kind of cool-looking after I got it to work. It was kind of a hassle
copy/pasting/typing the info into the chart for the big dipper activity but after i got it into
galaxsee it was fun to play around with it and see it from dfferent angles. All the formulas for
ra and dec were cunfusing though.
-Nan
Today we learned about the life cycle of stars, and how to use charts to predict things about
their life cycles. We also used computer programs to simulate the star's life. We also looked up
information on stars and we used a math formula to get the X,Y, and Z coordinates, so we could
make a simulation of the stars in a computer program. Today was a fun and educational day.
-Ronnie
I enjoyed today even more than yesterday! I liked programming in the coordinates of the Big Dipper
stars and then making them into a magic picture. Studying the HR diagram was fun, and now I can
tell everyone that our sun will stay "alive" for at least 5 billion more years, so not to worry. I
especially liked looking at all the pictures of nebulas on the web and finding out that Marina is
scared of the Hourglass Nebula.(lol)
-Nelly