De-Coding Starlight: From Pixels to Images - Middle School

After the Activity

1. The students should develop an understanding of how the "artist's impression" of the supernova remnant may vary among groups. If possible, the teacher should show the drawings from the different groups and compare them to some of the images of Cas A made by Chandra Scientists found at http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/0237/index.html.
2. This activity provides a good introduction for student use of the SAOImage DS9 software. This software was developed by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) to, first acquire "raw" Chandra data, and then, to form and analyze "false color" images. The software and data are available for student use at the Chandra Education Data Analysis Software and Activities web site (http://chandra-ed.harvard.edu).