Extra Credit Assignment

The purpose of this assignment is to attend ANY astronomy related activity in your community.  This can include:

• Any local Planetarium
  • Daniel M. Soref Planetarium
  • Manfred Olson Planetarium
  • Any other planetarium in your location
     
• Attend a meeting of any local astronomy club
  • Milwaukee Astronomical Society
  • Wehr Astronomical Society
  • CoffeeShop Astrophysics ( a series of informal lectures in the area)
  • Any other astronomy club in your location

  Obtain proof of attendance (and scan), take notes which include topic of presentation, names of presenters, what you learned and found interesting.  Email all to me with the subject Astronomy Activity Extra Credit.  This alone is worth the maximum of 40 bonus points.

  OR

• Watch an astronomy related video.  You will get 20 points per video for a maximum of 40 points (so you will need to critique two videos)

  
  Watch any NOVA episode listed below all related to astronomy (besides the required Origins video series).   All are available for viewing (streaming video at https://www.pbs.org/show/nova/ with a small donation by becoming a member) or look for one possibly posted on YouTube for free.
  

•   Here is the list:
  • Invisible Universe Revealed (great for unit 5)
  • Alien Planets Revealed (very interesting)
  • Asteroid: Doomsday or Payday?
  • Pluto and Beyond
• Secrets of the Sun (very interesting)
• Finding Life Beyond Earth
• Hunting the Edge of Space (2 episodes)
• Looking for Life on Mars
• Monster of the Milky Way
• Galileo's Battle for the Heavens

• The Planets:  either Ice Worlds, Mars, Saturn, Jupiter, or Inner Worlds
  
  Watch the video and take notes in your own words.  Indicate things you already knew and things that were new to you.  Give a critique of the video in terms of level of difficulty, your personal interest in the topic, whether the video was worth your time, etc.  Scan or type up your notes and email them to me with the subject Astronomy NOVA Extra Credit. 

... and here are some more videos you can choose from:
 

• Watch an episode of the 13 part series from 2014  Cosmos: a Spacetime Odyssey series by Neil deGrasse Tyson (except episodes 2, 6, and 9).  Do not confuse this with the 2020 series Cosmos: Possible Worlds.  You can stream it from Netflix (perhaps).  You can search here for ways to view or just Google "Cosmos: a Spacetime Odyssey" and you will find multiple sites which shows episodes for about $2 each.  One web site to watch it free is also here.

  Watch the video and take notes in your own words.  Indicate things you already knew and things that were new to you.  Give a critique of the video in terms of level of difficulty, your personal interest in the topic, whether the video was worth your time, etc.  Scan or type up your notes and email them to me with the subject Astronomy Cosmos Extra Credit. 

• Again, each video is worth 20 points and you can do a maximum of two videos (for a total of 40 points).   After I receive your report, I may ask for more information in the rare instance you failed to understand the directions.