Cosmology and the SFWHS class of '07

I've just taken over a class for a colleague out on parental leave until I go out myself in mid-March, and our first topic in the new term is "the Universe." Talk about your broad topics....

Seriously, it's been a lot of fun so far. We've talked about the Big Bang, Doppler shifts, absorption spectra and radio telescopes. There's lots of great pictures and animations out there on the Internet that students can ooh and ahh over. It's one thing to talk about gravitational lensing and another thing altogether to see how a cityscape view would be distorted if a small black hole were to pass across your field of view. Talking about cosmic background radiation brought us to the Allen Telescope Array in the highlands of California, which has just recently gone online with 42 of its planned 350 six-meter telescopes.

I even got to show off my pictures of my Waldorf juniors at the ATA on the Mt. Lassen astronomy trip in September of '05.
Here we are in front of one of the 42 dishes:



We hiked through some fantastic scenery on that trip as well.





Looking at the pictures brought back a lot of fond memories, particularly of the best van EVER:



(plus Alexandra S., who didn't make the return leg of the trip with us since she lived in Marin.)