The Radio JOVE project allows students, educators, and citizen scientists to contribute observations of the Sun and Jupiter at low frequencies (15-30 MHz). Traditionally, Radio JOVE telescopes have measured only one channel in a narrow range of frequencies, but Radio Jove 2.0 introduces a wide-band receiver consisting of a commercially available software defined radio. At Saint Anselm College, we are deploying Radio JOVE 2.0 at our observatory site over the fall semester. This presentation will showcase the construction of a more stable, steel-based dual-dipole to replace the PVC constructed version, the testing and deployment of the wide-band receiver, and a first look at the wide-band RFI environment and telescope sensitivity. 

Students at Saint Anselm College have used the original Radio JOVE in an afterschool high school program to teach students the fundamentals of radio astronomy using the published educational materials. We will give an update on our progress assessing this telescope and new data collection process in light of that, with the goal of developing projects for undergraduate students and activities that can be used at the high school level.

The Animations for Physics and Astronomy Project has been producing short visuals for key topics in introductory courses for over 20 years. Materials are released as Open Education Resources under a Creative Commons license. As a measure of impact, the project YouTube channel has garnered over 6 ½ million views in the channel’s 18-year history.  In this poster we will present a brief history of the project and its products as well as some recent work.  We will also discuss some opportunities available through evolving and in emerging technologies. Finally, we will outline some future efforts to enhance accessibility of the project’s creations.   

Analyzing the structure of merging binaries is a very computationally expensive task involving thousands of different models being fit to datasets produced by the LVK interferometers. These models allow us to calculate many different characteristics of binary black hole and neutron star systems, including total mass, merger mass, mass ratio, spin, and distance. Our gravity plotting tool allows students to conduct their own smaller version of the LVK gravitational wave search with real data taken from the interferometers. This is done using a smaller library of pre-generated models, which students can fit to both frequency and time domain merger data, letting them calculate the system merger time, total mass, mass ratio, and distance. This tool produces results consistent with the findings posted in the GWOSC database and is designed to be used within the Multi-Wavelength Universe! (MWU!) curriculum designed by Skynet.

A star cluster’s age, metallicity can be measured by fitting an isochrone model to its Herzsprung-Russell (HR) diagram which is calculated from its color-magnitude diagram with interstellar reddening and distance. The cluster tool of the Astromancer suite is a web application succeeding the Cluster Pro Plus of the Skynet Plotting tools for robust and sophisticated cluster analysis. Users can either upload observational photometry or query the archives from the tool, then remove field stars and fit isochrones interactively to estimate any star cluster’s age, metallicity, distance, reddening, number of stars, and radius. The tool is effective for teaching stellar evolution intuitively, and provides measurements on par with results in literature. It’s designed to be a part of the Multi-Wavelength Universe! (MWU!), using student’s own observational data from the Skynet Robotic Telescope Network.

College-level courses should not only provide up-to-date knowledge to students but also help them gain critical thinking skills. By comparing competing models and searching for evidence supporting each model, students learn to draw conclusions with favoring evidence. As one example, the Big Bang model was developed based on Hubble-Lemaître law. But mathematically, there is an alternative model (the Exponential Expansion model)—the distance of every galaxy expands exponentially with the same Hubble constant H, i.e., r(t)=r0*exp(H*t), where r0 is the distance of this galaxy at time zero. This model is also consistent with Hubble’s observation, but is of course not favored. Taking a journey to find evidence to support the current favored model will help students understand the history and limit of our knowledge, and thus help them establish critical thinking skills.