Modern Photometry Lab Exercises for Students in Introductory Astronomy

Extract

Introductory astronomy lab exercises have traditionally been rather simple in nature — observations are often limited to visual observing, sketching, and perhaps photography. These types of labs are more like 19th-century astronomy than the techniques used by modern astronomers. Students should also be introduced to quantitative work in astronomy, in the same way that they are in equivalent introductory physics and chemistry labs. A typical solution to some of these problems has been to use published data (for example, the Sky & Telescope lab exercise series) to provide numerical work. This is less satisfactory for the student than obtaining his or her own quantitative data to reduce and analyze.