Astro-HS

－An Astronomical Observation Network for High School Students in Japan

Hideo SHINOHARA 1), Bunji SUZUKI 2), Jun TAKAHASHI 3), and Astro-HS Steering Committee

1)Secretary-General of Astro-HS,Warabi high school, 5-3-8 Kita-machi, Warabi, Saitama, Japan

2)Kasukabe girls' high school, 6-1-1 Kasukabe-higashi, Kasukabe, Saitama, Japan

3)Mitsukaido 1st high school, 2543 Mitsukaido-kameoka-cho, Joso, Ibaraki, Japan

1. What is "Astro-HS"?

"Astro-HS" is a nation wide network of high school astronomy clubs.The purpose of this network is to observe astronomical phenomena. It started as the "Leonids Observation Project" in 1998, the leonid meteor shower was expected in autumn. Some volunteers such as teachers, science museum staff, and researchers gathered to establish a Steering committee for this project.

We, the Steering committee send circular mail through mailing lists. The groups that want to participate in Astro-HS, send a registration postcard to us. Then we send a confirmation e-mail, and that is the completion of the registration. And then we send observation manual books to participants by post. After confirmation, we do correspondence via e-mail.

2. What is the Most Important Purpose of This Project?

The most important purpose of this project is that students have a "real" experience to observe astronomical phenomena. Recently, most students seem to have a tendency to satisfy their curiosity by having virtual experiences. But to see stars in the real sky by using their own eyes is much more important than to see stars on a PC.

3. How did We Observe Leonids?

Most students in astronomy clubs don't have high-level skills in astronomical observations. So, a simple method is better for them in this project. The method is as follows; every student counts the meteors they can see with their naked eyes every 10 minutes. Then they calculate the average rate of individual observation. This is the official record of the group.

In the two years, from 1998 to 1999, more than 6,000 students participated in the Leonids observation project. We took many data, and found some peeks in meteor appearance.

4. From Leonids to "Astro-HS"

In 2000, we chose 2 themes as our observation project: those were Leonids and total lunar eclipse. We renamed our project "Astro-HS" from "Leonids" in 2000, because we had decided to set themes other than Leonids.

Since then, we have observed various astronomical phenomena, such as; Mars, Partial solar eclipse, Jupiter and Saturn occultation, Mercury and Venus transit, and so on.

"Kodomo-yume-kikin" is a fund supporting activities in children's education. We've had financial support from the fund since 2001. That enabled us to do various kinds of activities, such as making observation manual books, lending many observing instruments to participants, and having forums for all the participants(fig.1).

We got great results through this project. More than 15,000 students participated in Astro-HS in the last 10 years. We've obtained many pictures of various astronomical phenomena.In 2003, when Mars was close to the Earth, the Subaru telescope took some images for Astro-HS students. It was an epoch-making change of times for us in that one of the largest telescopes in the world was used for education.

5. Astro-HS in 2007

Now, there are 74 groups (700 students) participating in Astro-HS. The observation theme of this year was "Total lunar eclipse", on the 29th of August(fig.2). We suggested 2 methods of observation.

1) Record of color and shape of the Moon.

2) Record of eclipse procession.

Up to now, we have received several reports and images of lunar eclipse from the participants. Because of cloudy or rainy weather, some groups couldn't observe the eclipse. But since all the images and data are shared between all of us, every participant can use all the images and data for their studies.

6. Return to the Origin of Astro-HS

There are some problems in continuing our project. The most serious one is the lack of human power. All the staff are volunteers and have their own work. Now, we decided to return to the simple style in the forepart of this project. We mainly offered only web and mailing lists to the participants. We posted our observation manual on the web. Participants can download it from the web.

7. Future of Astro-HS

We should keep this simple style of "Astro-HS". We started discussions on plans for astronomical education in 2008 and 2009. 2009 is the "International Year of Astronomy (IYA)." I think we "Astro-HS" will be involved in IYA2009, and we are going to continue our project.

References

Suzuki, B. et al., "The Results of Astro-HS Video Observation Network",Asteroids, Comets, and Meteors 2002 proceedings.

Takahashi, J., and Suzuki, B., "The Observational Results by The Astro-classroom for High School Students"Asteroids, Comets, and Meteors 2002 proceedings.