Presentation 1 : Oral/Invited
ESO Education Initiatives
Arntraud Bacher
The European Southern Observatory (ESO) was found in 1962 to provide European astronomers access to the sky of the Southern Hemisphere and to co-ordinate astronomical research in Europe. ESO operates two of the world's best astronomical observatories at La Silla and Paranal, both in the Chilean Atacama Desert. Paranal houses the world's largest optical/infrared telescope, the Very Large Telescope (VLT).
Already in the mid-80's, ESO decided to accompany the VLT project and related scientific-technological developments with a major outreach effort. This programme has recently been expanded to include education, especially at the high school level. Parts of this programme are exercises for high-school students, competitions and teacher training courses. The exercises were realised together with the European Space Agency (ESA), which is the European Partner of the Hubble Space Telescope). In the first four exercises the students use four different methods of determining distances in space using original data from the VLT and the Hubble Space Telescope. As part of the 'European Week of Science and Technology 2002" ESO has initiated a competition for students. The first prize is a trip to the VLT in Chile. The aim of the teacher training courses is to distribute recent development in research among the teachers for the use in lessons.
Presentation 2 : Practical demonstration
European ESA/ESO Astronomy Exercise Series
Arntraud Bacher, Lars Lindberg Christensen
During one hour we will give an introduction to the ESA/ESO Astronomy Exercise Series and work
with one of the available exercises on the web. We will use:
- Printed booklets (available in English) or printouts of PDF-files (also available in Italian,
Dutch, French, German and Swedish). These will be handed out during the demonstration.
- PCs connected to the web where interactive versions of some of the exercises are
available.