Exploring the Universe with Celestia
Executive Summary:
1. The problem:
Download Celestia and answer a question using it. Here is my refined question based on my learning process: “Can I use Celestia to gain a greater understanding for what occurs to cause what is known as the retrograde motion of planets in the night sky?”
2. Output:
3. Discussion of relevance/meaning:
The relevance of this learning adventure for me was to be able to learn more about my own learning process and relate it to the learning theories we have been studying in this class and also in EDC 633. The theories include Dewey’s theory of experience, Lave and Wenger’s theory of learning associated with “legitimate peripheral participation”, and Frank Smith’s discussions of membership leading to learning.
One of the key quotes that stands out to me and relates to my Celestia learning experience is, “Legitimate peripheral participation” provides a way to speak about the relations between newcomers and old-timers, and about activities, identities, artifacts, and communities of knowledge and practice. It concerns the process by which newcomers become part of a community of practice.” (Lave and Wenger 29)
As I worked with Celestia I saw myself start with just the tool and get a certain distance by interacting with my own points of reference – past experiences, artifacts shared by the Cadre, and then finally move more into the community of practice by reaching out to Donna. Donna’s recent interaction with some members of the ‘astronomy club’ at her university increased her participation in this community. Through my interaction with her I also received some of the benefits of this ‘legitimate peripheral participation’.
It was at this point that my project really opened up for me as I saw all kinds of new ways to approach my questions and to work with the tool specifically. Donna asked great questions and provided insights into available features and controls that I had not yet explored. In fact, my interaction with her brought me back to some of the online resources (artifacts) for a closer examination. Finding such helpful things as the keyboard controls – which I love in any application. These had been mentioned in a posting, but until I had more background and experience with the tool they had not sunk in for their value. I used the keyboard controls extensively to complete answering my question.
4. Possible conclusions/solution:
In answer to my question, “”Can I use Celestia to gain a greater understanding for what occurs to cause what is known as the retrograde motion of planets in the night sky?” The answer is yes, absolutely. What is wonderful about Celestia is the amount of flexibility that you have to view astronomical phenomena from such varied locations. I was able to view the retrograde motion of Mars from three different, fixed points in space: Two different ‘angles’ while in a synchronous Earth orbit as well as a synchronous orbit with the Sun. At this point my research online, in combination with what I have been able to view in Celestia has helped me to have a much better understanding of what is happening during the process of retrograde motion. I would need to spend more time with Celestia to gather even better pictures and evidence of this occurring, but I was able to capture images of what this would look like in the night sky for an observer on Earth. This in and of itself is amazing, considering that the pictures that I captured were from up to a year ago and that I was able to see several months of actual movement within minutes – just amazing!
From a learning about learning perspective this adventure was a perfect example to me of how experience is a valuable teacher – particularly experience toward problem solving. Without a reason to go into the program I would have probably just looked it over, oohed and ahead a bit about the nice images and gone on with my day. By having a problem to solve/question to answer I was encouraged to dig into the tool. If I were to be in a situation where this was a tool I would be using on a regular, ongoing basis for research I would definitely reach out to the user community to become a member of the club. As it was, being able to participate with this club even on the periphery through interaction with their artifacts, greatly assisted my learning experience.
One of the key things I learned from this experience is that while I enjoy the process and experience, I very much desire to create some kind of compelling output from my efforts. I’m working to keep a balance on this during the OMET program so that I can be sure to experience all of the ways to learn and refine my personal theories of learning more than my ability to make a great video and post it to a web site – not that the video I created is a great video by any means – just that I put a lot of effort in to making it the best I could with the time I had available.
5. Supporting evidence – may include links, graphics, references, supportive arguments:
Please see the reflections below and be sure to check out the short video at the bottom of the page – hope you like Bowie!
Reflection on the Process:
Day 1 – 9-16-08
My first day with this program mainly consisted of downloading it, installing it, and opening it up and enjoying the rich visuals. I read through some of my fellow cadre members’ notes and discovered the demo option which gave me a nice overview of the power of the application.
From there I just ‘flew’ around a bit and checked out some planets and a few of the controls – particularly the “Travel” menu and adjusting my speed of travel.
Day 2 – 9-17-08
For my second day of the process I spent time thinking about the question that I would like to answer and beginning to think about how I would go about answering this question. Other than opening the program to show the demo to my wife, I did not spend any specific time in Celestia on this day. It was more about planning for what I wanted to do with the tool.
Day 3 – 9-18-08
Learning Adventure 2 – Getting to it… Day two of adventure – beyond the demo…
I decided to put together a series of steps that I believe will help me with my question of the retrograde motion of Mars and how often this occurs. I am thinking of changing my question to focus more on observing why this happens. Or I should say, why it appears to happen.
Here are my initial steps:
Step one – find Mars in Celestia
Step two – find out how to set dates within Celestia
Step three – find out what dates that Mars is supposed to be in retrograde
Step four – see if I can set up a series of dates within Celestia and find an appropriate ‘vantage point’ within the program to observe the motion
Step five – view the retrograde motion from several other vantage points and note what appears to be occurring
Step six – reflect on my observations and discuss my findings
Here is the outcome of pursuing several of these steps tonight:
Step one – Okay – step one was a little too easy – I’m sure the rest will not be as easy! It was very intuitive using the menus and such without needing to consult other resources.’
Step two was not a challenge either – nicely designed, intuitive application with straight forward menus and settings… so far so good.
Step three was fun – I learned to add the word “Astronomy” to my search unless I wanted to get astrology page returns! For my question I’m focused on the phenomena of retrograde motion from a scientific perspective. I was glad that I quickly located a site that had some great info about retrograde motion in general and when Mars would next be going into retrograde. It just so happens that this year will be one of the best times to observe this for the next seven years as Mars is moving closer to Earth as we speak. Of course, with Celestia time constraints seem to disappear!
Here is a link to the web site where I found some nice, basic information about the retrograde motion of planets: http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art53919.asp
Step four – While searching out the process to set up date/time intervals to answer my question I discovered the Orbits On/Off button – very handy to have the orbits on for my process. I guess I like to explore new programs and just try things in a discovery mode. I’m not against reading instructions or viewing demos, I just enjoy the process of learning through discover and almost accident. I tend to move into instructions or help files once I have narrowed down to some specific problem or issue I am trying to solve and for which the process is not clear, or involves a number of complex steps. Then I use the help and our trusty friend Google.
More exploring and trying key combinations from other apps has lead me to using the option key to change the viewing plane. Now I am interested in looking at the rest of the keyboard shortcuts so I can be more effective with the tool.
I’ll be continuing my journey soon…
Day 4 – 9/20.08
It’s getting late in the evening, but I am excited to move further into the learning adventure. The first three steps of my process were fairly straight forward – the fourth is going well and I am picking up at the point of programming in dates for my experiment in viewing the retrograde motion of Mars and noting why the retrograde motion appears to occur. For tonight, I will focus on the dates and leave the observation until tomorrow afternoon when I have more time to freely play and explore in the program. I am enjoying this process and relate to what I am reading in the learning theory books, including, Experience and Education, Situated Learning, and The Book of Learning and Forgetting. From the Dewey book, it is all about the experience and getting in their and doing. From the Frank Smith book, this is drawing on a past experience that was one of those ‘sealed learnings’ I had not reason to need or apply my knowledge of Mars’ retrograde motion, and know that I am back in a similar situation it all seems to be coming back, at least some of it!
According to the web site that I found Mars has been getting closer to Earth everyday since the beginning of 2007. On 11/15.07 the motion of Mars appeared to slow and then it began to appear to reverse motion until 1/30/08 when it again stopped and appeared to return to its original motion.
From my initial trials this evening it would seem that finding and maintaining an appropriate vantage point to witness the motion may be one of the hardest parts of answer my question of why Mars appears to reverse motion. I did discover, through ‘playing around’ with the settings, that I can set a date and then start time moving forward – I can speed up or slow down the time and observe the motion from different vantage points. The nice thing is that once you set this in motion you can use the mouse and keyboard controls to change your view of the scene. It looks like I should be able to change the plane of viewing in such a way as to see how the orbits of Earth and Mars interact to cause the appearance or reverse motion for Mars at certain times of the year. I am going to do more online research tomorrow to help me understand what I am seeing in Celestia, as it is a view that I have never before had – being able to float anywhere in space to observe stellar phenomena.
Celestia Day 5 – 9/21/08
Tonight I enjoyed a great synchronous session in Skype with Donna exploring with Celestia. Donna shared some of what she had learned by being invited into the astronomy ‘club’ at her university. Working with her tonight really hit home how much I value interaction with others in a learning experience. In about 30 minutes of working with Donna and having her share thoughts and input I was able to complete Step Four of my process, “…find an appropriate ‘vantage point’ within the program to observe the motion.”
I was able to view the retrograde motion of Mars of a series of dates from three different perspectives. My favorite perspective was simulating the view from Earth. This was the best way to experience the reverse motion of Mars as the Earth overtook and passed it in orbit around the sun. I am learning quite a bit about how I learn and seeing the theories we are studying in application. For one, I definitely value experience as Dewey points out as a valuable way to learn. I also enjoy working with others either directly, or through artifacts. In addition to working in person with Donna today, I also learned and grew in my understanding of Celestia by reading the postings of others on the forum, and through reading the content on the Celestia web sites, which is created by users.
An interesting reflection for me tonight (early this morning) is how I enjoy the process of creating the ‘output’ of my learning. In fact, I may have too great a focus on this aspect as I spent several hours working to create a video that would capture the essence of how I used Celestia and some of what I learned about the retrograde motion of Mars in the process. I am still working on getting this video hosted as apparently the Pepperdine servers do not support Flash video – which would be surprising. I am going to check on this tomorrow. If it is a limitation, I will simply upload to YouTube – I was hoping for a different approach on this project. Still, I enjoyed this part of the process as I felt it was where I was able to begin to reflect and internalize what I had learned as I put it into a new work.
This was a great learning adventure for me as I had never seen Celestia before and had to start the learning process from scratch. After spending almost a week with this program I am only now beginning to get a sense of the power of this tool. I wish that I had more time to spend exploring it and using it as a guide to what I might see right outside my door. It would be great to begin to join the user groups for this program and become a member of the ‘club’ as Frank Smith would say. In this way I could see the learning exploding exponentially… if only there were more hours in the day!
Finishing touches: I was able to post my video as a QuickTime movie hosted on the Pepperdine servers, rather than a Flash movie. Unfortunately, the size of the movie makes it a bit difficult to see all of the movement I witnessed when using the program. If I were do this again, I would take closer shots of each of the movements.