Lathrop High School Astronomy Back to JeffBaldwin.org

Since 2010, Lathrop High School has had an Astronomy Class! Please sign up for this if you are interested in learning about our universe through exploration, observation, experimentation, and inquiry. We will use telescopes to observe the Sun, Moon, planets, stars, clusters, nebulae and galaxies. We will learn how to predict the positions of planets, the Moon, understand the phases of the Moon, and learn how to photograph astronomical objects. We will collaborate with schools all around the world to perform huge experiments and measure things as far away as Jupiter and Saturn. We will connect with institutions with large telescopes and planetariums. We will build telescopes and other optics. We’ll determine universal truths through the scientific method and compare them with myths, theories, urban legends, religions and hoaxes. This class is a physical science class [Earth Science according to the state of California], but it is a BLAST! We’ll do some arithmetic, but nothing that will pop your brain. You will never look at our universe the same way again. Your brain will expand to the size of a small car! When the aliens come to exploit us, they’ll save you because you’ll be so smart they will let you join their interplanetary allegiance. Or something like that. Just get in the class, it’s fun.

Would you like to win an awesome astronomical telescope???? FREE!!! The Stockton Astronomical Society [SAS] is awarding 6” f/8 Orion SkyQuest Dobsonian telescopes to students in the San Joaquin county area. For details on how you can be awarded one of these fine instruments, go to http://www.stocktonastro.org/StrikingSparks.html. Along with the telescope, the awardees will also receive a year’s membership to the SAS, a set of star charts, and will be connected to a mentor for using the telescope and getting acquainted with astronomy.

If you need to contact me at home, by number is 594-1894 and my e-mail is baldjeff@comcast.net. My Droid is (360) 640-0093. My business email is bald@jeffbaldwin.org. Parents, please check your child’s progress in this class daily using Parent Portal.

Fall 2020 Approximate Schedule

	Astronomy Fall 2020
		Approximate Schedule and Pacing Guide
Chapter	Date	Subjects
	8/6/2020	Home Observations, Observation Logs, Telescope checkouts
	8/7/2020	RASC, Jupiter, Saturn, Moons, Mars
E3	8/10/2020	Time, UTC, PDT, PST, Earth Round, Time Zones	Aug	Earth Moon Sun
E3	8/11/2020	Calendar, Leap Year, Orbit, Background Stars, Perseid Meteor Shower
E3	8/12/2020	Uncle Al, Sky Rotation, Sidereal and Solar Time	Sept	Planets
	8/13/2020	Geocentric, Heliocentric, Ptolemy through Einstein, Venus GEW, SAS
	8/14/2020	Earth - Moon - Sun Starts, Hwy 4 Star Party, Double Shadows on Jupiter	Oct	Stars, Nebulae, Clusters
	8/17/2020	Scientific Method, Observation Requirements, How Large is the Earth?
Ch 6	8/18/2020	Interior, Surface and Atmosphere of Earth, Cont. Drift	Nov	Galaxies
Ch 6	8/19/2020	Earth's Water, Hydrologic Cycle, Origin of Water, New Moon, biosphere
	8/20/2020	Lunar Observing Project Starts, Rotation of the Earth Project, Sunrise, Sunset, Transit, Analemma	Dec	Cosmos
Ch 6	8/21/2020	HASP, Double Shadows on Jupiter, evolution of Lie on Earth
Ch 7	8/24/2020	How Far is the Moon? Lunar Libration, Coreolis, Synodic and Sidereal Months, Apparent Size of Moon
	8/25/2020	Apollo Mission, Solar Constant, Temps at Latitudes, Heat per Unit Area
Ch12, Ch7	8/26/2020	Distance and Size of Sun, Tides, Phases, Predicting Tides, Predicting Phases
Ch12	8/27/2020	Solar Constant, Structure, age and life of the Sun
Ch11, Ch9, Ch10	8/28/2020	Ceres at Opposition, Temps at Other Planets
Ch6, Ch7, Ch12	8/31/2020	Creation and Evolution of the Sun and Solar System
Ch12	9/1/2020	Sun Rotation Project, Chromosphere, Corona, Photosphere, Solar Wind, Aurorae
Ch9	9/2/2020	How Far Are Venus and Mercury from the Sun? Full Moon
Ch9, Ch10	9/3/2020	Terrestrial and Jovian Planets, Assign Presentations of Planets
	9/4/2020	Scale Model of the Solar System
Ch3	9/8/2020	Bohr Freefall Experiment
Ch 10	9/9/2020	How Far is Jupiter from the Sun?
Ch 9, Ch 10	9/10/2020	How Far are the Other Planets from the Sun? Kepler's 3rd Law, SAS
	9/11/2020	Hwy 4 Star Party, Neptune at opposition, Double Shadows on Jupiter
	9/14/2020	Geostationary Satellites, Orbital Speed of Moon and Planets
Ch11	9/15/2020	Comets, Meteors, Asteroids, Dust, TNOs, Minor Planets, Oert Cloud, Kuiper Belt
	9/16/2020	Gravity on Other Planets, Centers of Gravity, LaGrangian Points
Ch11	9/17/2020	New Moon, Make a Comet
	9/18/2020	HASP, Planet Presentations
	9/21/2020	Planet Presentations
	9/22/2020	Equinox, Plater Presentations
	9/23/2020	Planet Presentations
	9/24/2020	Planet Presentations
	9/25/2020	Planet Presentations
	9/28/2020	Planet Presentations
	9/29/2020	Planet Presentations
	9/30/2020	Planet Presentations
	10/1/2020	Mercury GEE, Full Moon, Planet Presentations
Ch14	10/2/2020	Stars, Life and Evolution, H-R diagram to represent
Ch4	10/5/2020	Electromagnetic Spectrum
Ch4, Ch14	10/6/2020	Mars closest and largest, Doppler Shift, Rainbows, Prisms and Spectra, Black Body Radiation
Ch5	10/7/2020	Eye structure, telescope structure and arithmetic, pinholes, lenses, mirrors
Ch4	10/8/2020	Light as a transverse wave, reflection, refraction, diffraction, gravity, speed, gas tube spectra, SAS
	10/9/2020	Midterms, Hwy 4 Star Party 10/10, HASP 10/17, Mars Opposition 10/13, New Moon 10/16
	10/19/2020	Constellations Assigned, Color addition, color subtraction
Ch13	10/20/2020	Distance to stars, inverse square law, magnitudes, parallax
Ch14, Ch4	10/21/2020	Polarization, Making elements, Messier Project, Blind Spot, color vs B/W in dark observing, vis vs photographic
Ch16	10/22/2020	Density of stars in the Milky Way. Probability of nearby current intelligent neighbors
Ch15	10/23/2020	Neutron stars, pulsars, black holes, black dwarfs, white dwarfs, light pollution, full cutoff, glare, counts stars in regions
	10/26/2020	Constellation Presentations
	10/27/2020	Constellation Presentations
	10/28/2020	Constellation Presentations
	10/29/2020	Constellation Presentations
	10/30/2020	Full Moon, Uranus at Opposition, Daylight Savings Time Ends, Constellation Presentations
	11/2/2020	Constellation Presentations
	11/3/2020	Constellation Presentations
	11/4/2020	Constellation Presentations
Ch16	11/5/2020	Our Milky Way Galaxy, structure, size, stars, dust, clusters, nebulae
Ch17	11/6/2020	Hwy 4 Star Party, Spiral, Elliptical, Irregular Galaxies
Ch16	11/9/2020	Things in galaxies, APODs
Ch17	11/10/2020	Mercury GEW, Galaxy details
	11/12/2020	SAS, merging and interacting galaxies
	11/13/2020	HASP, New Moon, Assign APODs
Ch18	11/16/2020	The Expanding Universe, Red shifts, speed vs distance, Hubble, Big Bang, 3 degree K
Ch18	11/17/2020	Cosmology, age, eventual conditions, alternate theories
	11/18/2020	APODs
	11/19/2020	APODs
	11/20/2020	APODs
	11/23/2020	APODs
	11/24/2020	APODs
	11/25/2020	APODs
	11/30/2020	Full Moon, Uranus at Opposition, Daylight Savings Time Ends, Penumbral Eclipse
	12/1/2020	Expansion Room
	12/2/2020	Expansion Room
	12/3/2020	Expansion Room
	12/4/2020	Expansion Room
	12/7/2020	Expansion Room
	12/8/2020	Expansion Room
	12/9/2020	Expansion Room
	12/10/2020	SAS
	12/11/2020	Hwy 4 and HASP, Moon Occults Venus
	12/14/2020	New Moon, Total Solar Eclipse in Argentina
	12/15/2020	Expansion Room
	12/16/2020	Expansion Room
	12/17/2020	Finals
	12/18/2020	Finals, Jupiter and Saturn meet, Solstice

Fall 2017 astro kid ATMing. Villanueva and Nisperos showing off their final product.

About five separate projects going on at once. Barazza and Florez after repairing a Dob.

Members of our Astronomy Class at the October 27^th, 2017 Mel’s Garage Star Party at the MUSD District Office.

Scope works and is ready for service!

Mounting mirror cell in foreground and adjusting altitude bearings in background.

Organized chaos. Our ATM production line at work!

Some work hard, some pose hard.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_4jlXd9jZ4 will show an action video of the kids working on telescopes.

On Thursday, May 12^th 2016, Karandeep Mann won a Striking Sparks Telescope from the Stockton Astronomical Society at UOP in Stockton. He earned this through submitting an essay, having a teacher submission [Baldwin], and showing up to multiple SAS events. He won the telescope, eyepieces, a few other odds and ends, and a year’s membership to the SAS. Congratulations Karandeep! After the ceremonies we went outside at UOP and had a star party. We gawked at the Moon and Jupiter. On the face of Jupiter we observed an eclipse of Jupiter’s moon Ganymede.

Amateur Telescope Making [ATM] lives on at Lathrop High School. Scroll down to see photos of the LHS Astronomy class manufacturing their telescopes.

Barber drew the Moon as it appeared through his telescope in February 2016.

The August 2017 solar eclipse shot from LHS by Natalia Goana with her cell phone through a pair of cheap eclipse goggles. Turned out great!

Waxing Crescent Moon by Tut using his cell phone through a 12” scope.

Here is the waxing crescent Moon shot by J.N. Dumaguing at a school star party on December 14^th 2015. This was a cell phone shot through a 6” f/8 Dobsonian telescope.

This is a shot of the total solar eclipse of 2017 that Mr. Baldwin shot in Oregon using an Astrophysics 140 Starfire on a Takahashi EM400 mount.

The morning of October 9^th, 2015, looking east before sunrise. From top to bottom is Venus, the Moon, and Jupiter. Also in the photo’s field should be Regulus, Mars and Mercury. This shot was made by Karandeep Mann, a member of the Astronomy class in the Fall of 2015. Good shot Mann!

This is the crescent Venus shot through our 12” school scope using a cell phone. Forgive me, I do not remember who shot this picture. It was shot at 11:00 in the morning on some date in the Fall of 2015.

The Moon shot by Chelsea Carrillo through her cell phone looking into the school telescope on 3/25/2015. Nice shot Carrillo!

Here is a shot of the Lunar Eclipse of 08 October 2014 shot by Dr. Larry Grimes at Sierra High School.

Here are some shots through cell phones by LHS Astro students. Left is Josh Que, in the middle is Jesenya Barajas, and on the right is Jennifer Tran.

Some photos of the astronomy class star party on Tuesday night, August 24^th, 2010. We watched the International Space Station pass overhead. Some students watched the ISS in the telescope.

We also looked at Jupiter, Uranus, the Owl Cluster, the double star Mizar, and the Full Moon. These star parties are very fun, interesting, and allows us to get to know each other in an out-of-class way that is more relaxing and highly bonding.

The left photograph of Jupiter was taken October 22^nd, 2011 by Baldwin through a 10” telescope using the school’s Orion digital StarShooter camera. Students may use this camera to photograph astronomical objects. The photo on the right was taken at school on November 7^th 2011 of the Sun showing the largest sunspots in years. You can see the penumbras around the sunspots’ umbrae.

Two photographs of Mercury transiting the Sun on 09 May 2016. We watched this from LHS, but Omar Anzaldua shot these photographs from Galt. He is a member of the Stockton Astronomical Society.

This is Nico, our class mascot. He’s 4 years old [2014] and is an astronaut AND an astronomer. Niko comes to our school star parties as well as those offered by the Stockton Astronomical Society. Niko knows all the planets and the Moon and likes to look at them through telescopes. We are going to build Niko a telescope this year [2014 – 2015] in the Astronomy Class. He doesn’t know it yet, and I’m sure he isn’t reading this web page, but we can keep an update at this site for his mommy and daddy to check out once in a while.

Right now it doesn’t look like much, but this is the tube. The mirrors, focuser, spider are all mounted, the inside is painted flat black, and the outside is ready to be bondoed patched and painted. The wood parts have been started and we’ll get photos of them here soon. Hang in there Nico, it’s coming.

Nico’s telescope finally finished by the Astro class of Spring 2015. Nico and Mr. Baldwin celebrating his new scope. He’ll grow into it.

Nico gave Mr. Baldwin a garden gnome on 3-17-16 at our school star party.

Our class builds telescopes, and in the 2015-2016 school year we started a large project of refurbishing old hand-me-down MUSD telescopes. In the 1990 Mark Miller of East Union High School got a grant through MUSD to assemble about 30 4.25” f/8 small Dobsonian telescopes. The classes then used them to help 6^th graders learn astronomy. Later when Mark moved on to another school the D.O. got the scopes where that sat for years. The ywere going to throw them away, so they asked me if I’d like them and I said yes. By now they were sick and fewer in number, so my astro class at Sierra High School refurbished tham. I later moved to Washington state, so I gave the scopes to SHS where they sat for a whole. The John Sprenger at Weston Range High School got them and used them in his astro class. In 2008 I moved back to CA and have been working at Lathrop High School ever since, and John gave me the scopes. They are now even fewer in number nad in totally gross condition.

So in the Fall of 2015 my astro class got the optical tube assemblies started. The Spring of 2016 the astro class is now getting the rocker box and ground board system working. All new Baltic birch wood should make them appear newer. By May 2016 we should have these first 12 scopes working fine, along with 6 – 8 telescopes donated to us by the Sonoma County Astronomical Society. I would be nice to have 20 functioning scopes by the end of the school year. Next year [2016 – 2017] I would like to get a total of 34 telescopes ready for kids to take home, one scope for each kid. Meanwhile the students are learning how to build scopes, learning how they work, and will know them intimately making them telescope mechanics. Her ae some action shots of them working on the scopes.