Working Case

Appendix 1: Using Voyager: SkyGazer College Edition

Voyager: SkyGazer v4.0 College Edition combines exceptional planetarium software with informative tutorials. Here are just a few of the exciting things your students can do with this powerful tool:

* Use the planetarium features to learn the constellations.

* Use the built-in animations to explore astronomical phenomena such as meteor showers, eclipses, and more.

* Identify nebulae and galaxies that can be observed through a small telescope from your campus.

* Study and map how the sky varies with time of day, time of year, and latitude.

* Observe the Earth-Moon system from another planet within our solar system.

Appendix 3 lists particular resources within SkyGazer that you may wish to integrate with various topics in the book. To use these features, note the following:

* To access Basic Files, start from the main menu, choose File, Open Settings, and then select the desired file.

* To access Demo Files, start from the main menu, choose File, Open Settings, and then select the desired file.

* To access Explore files, start from the main menu and choose Explore.

In addition, remember that you can find numerous assignable activities for SkyGazer in the Astronomy Media Workbook, Sixth Edition (ISBN 0-321-55627-5).

Appendix 2: Using the Cosmos Series

If you've watched the Cosmos series, you won't be surprised to know that the series and Carl Sagan were major influences on the authors of this textbook. (In fact, the lead author changed his graduate study plans from biophysics to astrophysics as a result of watching the series.) Thus, while the series does not correspond directly to the textbook, it makes an outstanding resource for reinforcing key ideas. There are at least two basic ways in which you can use the Cosmos series with this textbook:

1. If you can make the series available for students to watch on reserve at your department library, you may wish to assign the Cosmos episodes for individual viewing on students' own time. For example, you might assign one episode per week or one episode every 2 weeks. Although this means that the topics in the episodes might not correspond directly to what you are covering in the book at the same time, it makes it easy for students to plan their viewing time and still serves as a great way to reinforce ideas that students cover in the text at some other time.

* For a one-semester course focusing on the solar system, we suggest assigning Episodes 1-6.

* For