The Astronomical Society of the Pacific (ASP) has two interesting
positions available in its education department:

1. Director of Education

The ASP is looking for a person with at least a masters degree in
science or science education and experience in project management and
education, to provide overall management of and help develop
strategic directions for the broad range of the Society's educational
programs.
Duties include developing new initiatives, helping with conceiving
and writing proposals, supervising staff and programs, and
cultivating partnerships with other organizations.

2. Lead Formal Educator

The ASP is looking for a person with good knowledge of astronomy and
experience in K-12 education to work on a number of existing and
developing programs in astronomy education.  Current duties include
coordinating Project ASTRO, managing a web-based quarterly newsletter
for teachers, conducting training programs for school districts
interested in hands-on astronomy, and assisting with other
initiatives in formal education.


More detailed information about each position and specific
instructions for applying can be found at the Society's web site at:
http://www.astrosociety.org/about/career.html

More information about the education programs of the 120-year old
international Society, headquartered in San Francisco, can be found
at:
http://www.astrosociety.org/education.html




_______
Timothy F. Slater, Ph.D.
University of Wyoming
Excellence in Higher Education
Endowed Chair in Science Education
cell 520-975-1373
timslaterwyo@...
________

Hi all,

It looks like spammers have discovered the SkyServer Yahoo group.
Several new members joined in the past 2 weeks and have posted spam
messages. I have deleted the offending messages and banned the
robo-members.

I have also turned on posting moderation, from new members only. This
means that all of you can keep posting to the group as always, but
anyone new to the group must have their messages approved by me. I'll
try to approve real messages as quickly as possible, and delete the
spam without you ever seeing it.

Sorry that I've let these messages get through to you. It's always a
challenge to stay one step ahead of the spammers. I appreciate your
patience as we work out the best way of working together.

Clear skies,
     Jordan

Hi all!

I hope to see some of you at the AAS meeting next week in Honolulu.
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey will have a booth as it usually does, and
I'll be at the booth, wearing the chef's hat as always.

We are also planning an informal SkyServer get-together-and-talk
dinner before the meeting, on Sunday night. We'll be meeting at 6:30
PM in the lobby of the Ala Moana hotel, across the street from the
convention center. Look for me - I'll be wearing the hat. Let me know
you're coming (E-mail me at raddick@... ), and I'll be sure to
wait for you.

If you won't be able to come to AAS, we'll be having a similar
informal meeting dinner at the AAPT meeting in Greensboro at the end
of July.

Thanks!

Clear skies,
     Jordan

On Mar 19, 2007, at 10:26 AM, Jordan Raddick wrote:

>    For those of you that I met at the AAS/AAPT meeting in Seattle,
> it's been a little more than 2 months, so I wanted to check in with
> you and see how you've been able to use SkyServer. For everyone else,
> I'd love to hear from you too!
>    I'll be doing more SkyServer workshops in the future, and I'm
> collecting some information on how people are responding to the
> workshop a couple months later, beyond the standard end-of-workshop
> evaluation forms. Your feedback now will help us improve the
> experiences of other teachers then. Please hit reply to this E-mail
> and fill out the short survey below (just five questions!) Put your
> answers right below the questions. Question 5 asks what questions you
> still have - I'll post answers to this list.
>    If you hit reply, your responses will be posted to the entire group
> - your ideas might spark some ideas in other people. If you'd prefer
> to respond just to me and keep your answers anonymous, copy and paste
> your answers and send them to raddick@... .
>     Thank you, and I hope you keep finding the SDSS useful!

Hi Jordon and group.

My course's pacing is rather slower than usual this semester, but
we're almost to the point where we'll begin using the SDSS
activities. I usually start with hunting asteroids and then progress
into spectral classification and then into color and the HR diagram.
These activities make the textbook come alive (pardon the cliche).

> 1. How would you describe yourself and your school?

I'm at a community college in western North Carolina. I've been
teaching for nearly 15 years.

> 2. What courses do you teach?

Currently, I'm in charge of calculus-based physics (two semester
sequence), general astronomy (two semester sequence), and descriptive
astronomy (one semester). I'm currently writing a textbook for
semester one of the two semester sequence. It's built entirely around
critical thinking. I would love to revamp the second semester of the
sequence so that it's built around the SkyServer activities.

> 3. How often do you use Sloan Digital Sky Survey data in your
> teaching?

Every spring in my second semester astronomy course.

> 4. What tools and projects of SkyServer do you use most often? Why?

Asteroid hunting (I wrote the version of the activity I use...it's on
SkyServer), Color (practice with measuring real fluxes and
magnitudes), Spectral Types, HR Diagrams. These all reinforce
textbook concepts. The asteroid activity also gives students a gentle
introduction to image processing software. I use the freely available
ImageJ from NIH.

Joe Heafner
heafnerj(at)sticksandshadows(dot)com
www(dot)SticksAndShadows(dot)com

Hi all,
    For those of you that I met at the AAS/AAPT meeting in Seattle,
it's been a little more than 2 months, so I wanted to check in with
you and see how you've been able to use SkyServer. For everyone else,
I'd love to hear from you too!
    I'll be doing more SkyServer workshops in the future, and I'm
collecting some information on how people are responding to the
workshop a couple months later, beyond the standard end-of-workshop
evaluation forms. Your feedback now will help us improve the
experiences of other teachers then. Please hit reply to this E-mail
and fill out the short survey below (just five questions!) Put your
answers right below the questions. Question 5 asks what questions you
still have - I'll post answers to this list.
    If you hit reply, your responses will be posted to the entire group
- your ideas might spark some ideas in other people. If you'd prefer
to respond just to me and keep your answers anonymous, copy and paste
your answers and send them to raddick@... .
     Thank you, and I hope you keep finding the SDSS useful!


                                         -Jordan


1. How would you describe yourself and your school?




2. What courses do you teach?




3. How often do you use Sloan Digital Sky Survey data in your teaching?




4. What tools and projects of SkyServer do you use most often? Why?




5. What further questions do you have regarding the SDSS, SkyServer,
and possible student projects?

Julia, all,
    Here is the query I talked about, which looks at both the galaxy
and specobj tables. This will find magnitudes and isophotal radii of
galaxies with measured redshifts. It will also return the redshift.

-- Please read the note above regarding query limits and spatial queries
select top 10 g.objid,g.ra,g.dec,g.g,g.r,g.g-g.r as gminusr, g.isoA_g,
g.isoB_g, s.z as redshift
from Galaxy g, SpecObj s
where
     g.objID = s.bestobjID
AND g.g < 18
AND g.r < 18
AND g.isoA_g < -9999
AND g.isoB_g < -9999


A couple things to point out about the query above

1) Note prefixes - g means galaxy view, s means specobj view

2) Very important! - note line where g.objid=s.bestobjid. This means
that we must check that we are looking at the same object in both the
galaxy and specobj views. Otherwise the query will return all objects
in both tables (300,000 x 700,000 objects!)

On Jan 30, 2007, at 2:44 PM, Jordan Raddick wrote:

> Because I've always worked in a Windows environment, I'm not familiar
> with rsync and wget, so I wasn't able to do the last step in the
> tutorial. Are other people more familiar with these tools?

I've not yet read this tutorial, but I know what wget is. It is a
tool for retrieving files and it's optimized for slow connections. It
provides very reliable means for downloading large files. I use it to
download Linux iso images. It's open source (GNU) and available for
Windows and Mac. I learned the hard way that versions prior to 1.10
couldn't download files larger than 2GB so get the latest version.
wget can be found at http://www.gnu.org/software/wget/.

   rsync is similar and can be found at http://samba.anu.edu.au/rsync/.

Joe Heafner
heafnerj(at)sticksandshadows(dot)com
www(dot)SticksAndShadows(dot)com

Hi Martin, all,

I didn't see your message to the group until today, possibly because
of the technical problems that Yahoo Groups was having. Sorry about that.

What error is it giving you?

I was able to get the search working. The directions in the Tutorial
are a bit confusing because they refer to a previous version of the
tool. To make it a bit clearer, I have uploaded screenshots of what
values I put in the tools. To see the files, go to the "Files" link on
the left, then the "Questions" folder.

Following the directions in the tutorial, the first steps are shown in
"spectro1.jpg" and "spectro2.jpg". Results of that search are shown in
"html-results.jpg" and "csv-results.jpg". The next step, searching the
Data Archive Server for the FITS files, is shown in "das1.jpg" and
"das2.jpg". Results of that are shown in "das-results.jpg".

Because I've always worked in a Windows environment, I'm not familiar
with rsync and wget, so I wasn't able to do the last step in the
tutorial. Are other people more familiar with these tools?

Let me know if the screenshots help you figure out what to do. If
you're still having trouble, feel free to give me a Skype on Thursday.
I'll be on from 3-4 US Eastern time. In the UK, that should be 8 to 9.

Thanks!

-Jordan


--- In skyserver@yahoogroups.com, "martin_piers_nicholson"
<martin_piers_nicholson@...> wrote:
>
> Has anybody managed to get the tutorial on spectra to work?
> http://www.sdss.org/dr5/tutorials/colorconstraints.html
>
> I have tried it many times but always get an error message!
>
> I have emailed the address supplied but no reply yet.
>
>
> Best wishes
>
> Martin Nicholson
> Daventry, UK
>

Hi all,

A time conflict has come up with the Monday-Wednesday Skypice hours
that I gave out last week, so I'd like to change the hours to:

Tuesday and Thursday, 3:00-4:00 Eastern time.

I've added those hours to the Calendar in the group, but I've set it
so that it doesn't send an E-mail auto-reminder.

This starts this week, Tuesday (today!) and Thursday.

It will change slightly next week, just for a week - I'll send out an
E-mail next Monday.

If those times won't work for you, send me an E-mail
(raddick@...) and I'll be glad to set a different time.

Clear skies,
     Jordan

Has anybody managed to get the tutorial on spectra to work?
http://www.sdss.org/dr5/tutorials/colorconstraints.html

I have tried it many times but always get an error message!

I have emailed the address supplied but no reply yet.


Best wishes

Martin Nicholson
Daventry, UK

Hi all,

Andrew and Chelen reminded me that in my message yesterday, I forgot
to include my Skype name. I created a new Skype account for questions
related to skyserver:

skyserver-help

It will also show up under my name if you search for me.

My first Skypice hours will be tomorrow from 4-5 Eastern time.

Hope you had a good holiday!

Clear skies,
      Jordan

Jordan ... Will you post your Skype name to this group?

--chj

**************
Chelen H. Johnson
Breck School
123 Ottawa Avenue North
Minneaopolis, MN 55422
chelen.johnson@...

On Jan 15, 2007, at 11:54 AM, Jordan Raddick wrote:

> If you don't have Skype, it's a free program that lets you make free
> computer-to-computer Internet phone calls. You can talk free of charge
> to anyone, anywhere in the world, as long as they have the program and
> a broadband connection. You can download the software from
> www.skype.com .

Hmmm....now I have a reason to try it.

Joe Heafner
heafnerj(at)sticksandshadows(dot)com
www(dot)SticksAndShadows(dot)com

Hi all!

Thanks to those of you who came to my workshop last week at AAS/AAPT.
It was great to meet all of you and see the excellent work you did
with SkyServer. Thanks also to the people who signed up for the group
before - it's great to see that you're still active and thinking about
how to use scientific data to improve your students' learning experiences.

I also wanted to tell you about a new plan that I'm starting. I know
that it can be difficult to remember everything you learned in a
workshop or presentation, and I'd like to be able to offer some help
when you need it. So my plan is that I'll be holding "office hours" on
Skype (Skypice hours?) twice a week.

If you don't have Skype, it's a free program that lets you make free
computer-to-computer Internet phone calls. You can talk free of charge
to anyone, anywhere in the world, as long as they have the program and
a broadband connection. You can download the software from
www.skype.com .

My Skypice hours will be, in general, Monday and Wednesday from 4 to 5
PM Eastern time. If they'll change for a given week, I'll post a
message to this group.

Thanks, and I'll see you soon!

-Jordan

On Jan 5, 2007, at 6:07 PM, Jordan Raddick wrote:

> Thanks for responding so quicly! Will you be at AAS?

I don't do AAS any more but I'll be at future AAPT meetings.



Joe Heafner
heafnerj(at)sticksandshadows(dot)com
www(dot)SticksAndShadows(dot)com

Did you know you can get images for query results instead of just numbers?

In the Search Form tool, click "Submit Query to Image List." When you
see your results, click "Send to List."

Click on the images to go to the Navigate tool. Click on the names
(above the images) to go to the Explore tool.

Hi Joe!

We're at a SkyServer workshop at AAS Seattle. We're using the group as
a way of getting our information organized for projects that we're
doing. It's cool.

There should be lots of messages going back and forth in the next few
days.

Thanks for responding so quicly! Will you be at AAS?

-Jordan

--- In skyserver@yahoogroups.com, Joe Heafner <heafnerj@...> wrote:
>
> On Jan 5, 2007, at 2:08 PM, tad.thurston wrote:
>
> > Just trying the "respond" link...
>
> It's working.
>
> I'd be interested in knowing how everyone is using the skyserver
> activities.
>
> Joe Heafner
> heafnerj(at)sticksandshadows(dot)com
> www(dot)SticksAndShadows(dot)com
>

Hi all,

For those of you who are at AAS, we'll be having an informal social
gathering of people interested in SkyServer. We'll be having dinner or
drinks or just talking. Meet Tuesday at 5:30 in the lobby of the
convention center. For people going to the banquet, we should be done
in time.

There will be a special guest there - a scientist that works with the
Sloan Digital Sky Survey. (I'm still figuring out who it will be.)

If you're at AAS, I hope to see you there!

-Jordan

On Jan 5, 2007, at 2:08 PM, tad.thurston wrote:

> Just trying the "respond" link...

It's working.

I'd be interested in knowing how everyone is using the skyserver
activities.

Joe Heafner
heafnerj(at)sticksandshadows(dot)com
www(dot)SticksAndShadows(dot)com

--- In skyserver@yahoogroups.com, "scott_brnsn" <scott_brnsn@...> wrote:
>
> Hi Everyone,
>
> Scott
>

Just trying the "respond" link...

On Jan 5, 2007, at 12:23 PM, scott_brnsn wrote:

> Hi Everyone,

At last! A message! :-)

Joe Heafner
heafnerj(at)sticksandshadows(dot)com
www(dot)SticksAndShadows(dot)com

Hi Everyone,

Scott

Hello and welcome to the SkyServer group!

I see a couple new people have signed up, and we're glad to have you.
Please let me know if there is anything that the group or the
moderator (me) can help with in understanding or using SDSS data. Thanks!

-Jordan

Hi everyone.

I've been using SkyServer for about three years now in my second semester
introductory
astronomy course. The activities are well done and I plan to use them again this
year. I teach
at Catawba Valley Community College in Hickory, NC.

Joe Heafner

Hi everyone.

Jordan: Thank you for the seminar

Welcome!

We're glad that you have joined us. This group is about the SkyServer
web site of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The group's purpose is for
you to share questions and insights with other instructors on how to
use the  SDSS data.

To post a message to the group, click "Post" on the group page, or
send an E-mail to skyserver@yahoogroups.com. To contact the group
owner, E-mail skyserver-owner@yahoogroups.com. To unsubscribe, E-mail
skyserver-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com.