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M.J. Raddick (Johns Hopkins University)
We have completed a new version of the SkyServer education web site featuring data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey’s Data Release 1 (DR1). DR1 includes data from over 2,000 square degrees of northern sky, with over 80 million stars and galaxies. SkyServer offers students and teachers easy access to complete data for all these objects.
In addition to the new data, the site includes a new suite of visual tools based on web services. A finding chart generator generates on-the-fly JPG images for use in telescope finding charts. An updated Navigation tool combines a point-and-click interface to data with intuitive pan-and-zoom navigation through the sky. A new Image List tool offers thumbnail images of up to 1,000 objects at a time, which users can click on for further exploration. The Image List tool can also return thumbnail images as a result of SQL queries, allowing users to easily decide which query results are worth following up on.
SkyServer’s educational projects have also been updated to reflect the larger volume of data – students from 3rd grade to graduate school can now learn science by examining and searching over 80 million objects. The site also features a new style to complement the new data.
In this talk, I will briefly introduce SkyServer’s new features, and will discuss how effectively the site is being used for education. I will also discuss some of the lessons we have learned from the project.
If you would like more information about this abstract, please follow the link to http://skyserver.sdss.org. This link was provided by the author. When you follow it, you will leave the Web site for this meeting; to return, you should use the Back comand on your browser.
The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: raddick@pha.jhu.edu
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 35#5
© 2003. The American Astronomical Soceity.