Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure, Eleventh Grade, Astronomy Science Projects (4 results)

The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is a space telescope for NASA's Explorers program, designed to search for exoplanets using the transit method in an area 400 times larger than that covered by the Kepler mission. It was launched on April 18, 2018 atop a Falcon 9 rocket. During its two-year primary mission, it was expected to find more than 20,000 transiting exoplanets, compared to about 3,800 exoplanets known when it launched. The first light image from TESS was taken on August… Read more

The Kepler space telescope is a retired space telescope launched by NASA to discover Earth-size planets orbiting other stars. Named after astronomer Johannes Kepler, the spacecraft was launched on March 7, 2009, into an Earth-trailing heliocentric orbit. The principal investigator was William J. Borucki. After nine years of operation, the telescope's reaction control system fuel was depleted, and NASA announced its retirement on October 30, 2018. Designed to survey a portion of Earth's region… Read more

For an advanced science fair project, you can build your own telescope and learn how to use it to make observations of the night sky. Can you make your own observations to determine the orbital period of Jupiter's major moons? The Dobsonian telescope, first built and popularized by astronomer John Dobson, is considered to be the best bang-for-your-buck if you want to build a good amateur telescope. The smaller the telescope's aperture the less expensive to build, but also the less… Read more

In astronomy, a transit (or astronomical transit) is a phenomenon when a celestial body passes directly between a larger body and the observer. As viewed from a particular vantage point, the transiting body appears to move across the face of the larger body, covering a small portion of it. The word "transit" refers to cases where the nearer object appears smaller than the more distant object. Cases where the nearer object appears larger and completely hides the more distant object are known as… Read more