8th EAAE Summer School          

Utrecht, The Netherlands, 19 -24 July 2004


Report on 8th EAAE International Summer School

The 8th EAAE International Summer School took place in De Glind and Utrecht from 19th to 24th July 2004. Seventy participants from 15 European countries attended a group of activities related to "Astronomy by means of practical Activities". Teachers from Belgium, Bulgaria, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Turkey and UK exchanged information on Teaching Astronomy field, spread over 2 General Lectures, 13 Workshops, 1 General Working Group, 2 Observations and 1 Poster session.

General Lectures

  1. EUROPEAN SPACE AGENCY ACTIVITIES
  2. PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURES OF DUTCH RADIO ASTRONOMY

Workshops

  1. ASTRONOMICAL ACTIVITIES AND EXPERIMENTS IN SCHOOL FOR CLOUDY CONDITIONS
  2. ASTROPHOTOGRAPHY WITH A COMPACT DIGITAL CAMERA
  3. CELESTIAL GLOBES AND STAR MAPS
  4. DOPPLER EFFECT AND SATURN SPECTRUM
  5. FOLLOWING BEHIND THE ISS
  6. FROM MISCONCEPTIONS TO UNDERSTANDING
  7. HOW DO WE KNOW THAT THE UNIVERSE IS EXPANDING?
  8. MEASURING DISTANCES BY PARALLAX METHOD
  9. PHOTOGRAPHIC STUDY OF VARIABLE STARS
  10. SEASONS MERRY-GO-ROUND
  11. THE ORBIT OF VENUS
  12. THE SOLAR SPECTRUM
  13. THE TEMPERATURES OF STARS

General Working Group

Posters

  1. A SIMPLE MODEL ROCKET
  2. ASTRONOMY SUMMER SCHOOL: A NEW EXPERIENCE EVERY YEAR
  3. GRAPHS ON THE LENGTHS OF THE DAYS
  4. HOW TO MEASURE THE EARTH-SUN DISTANCE DURING MERCURY TRANSIT
  5. MODEL OF SUN-VENUS-EARTH SYSTEM: HOW TO SOLVE SOME DELICATE GEOMETRICAL PROBLEMS
  6. NEED AND POSSIBILITIES OF ASTRONOMY TEACHING IN THE COMPRENHENSIVE SCHOOL
  7. SINGS AND CONSTELLATIONS OF THE ZODIAC
  8. THE ACTIVITIES OF THE OBSERVATORY OF TRIESTE FOR THE OLYMPICS OF ASTRONOMY IN ITALY
  9. THE EARTH AND THE MOON - A DOUBLE PLANET
  10. THE FAULKES TELESCOPES PROJECT: LIVE ASTRONOMY WITH RESEARCH-GRADE EQUIPMENT
  11. UNDER THE SAME SKY

The organisers of this course always encourage active participation by all the teachers and professors through personal contributions to the poster session, in the common discussions or in the general working groups. As a result of this spirit of promoting the exchange of information, each participant received the Proceedings, which included all the activities. All of these papers appeared in English and one of the two other official languages of the Summer School. This year, as well as of English, the official languages were German as hosted country and Italian for reasons of proximity.

The General Lecture of our visit to ESTEC was presented by Dr. Jean Claver Head Astrophysics Mission Divisionfrom European Space Agency in Noordwijk, the Netherlands and Dr. Peter D. Barthel from Kapteyn Institute of University of Groningern and Chair of NOVA Education Commission presented the General Lecture in the visit to the Westerbork radio telescopes. The instructors were members of EAAE. They produced the prior list of activities during the meeting. The majority of them are members of EAAE WG of the Summer School: Francis Berthomieu, Roland Boninsegna, Sakari Ekko, Leonarda Fucili, Rupert Gesenberger, Irma Hannula, Alan Pickwick, Rosa M. Ros, Roland Szostak, and Ederlinda Viņuales as well as Gert Shooten and Robert Wielinga, non-members of this working group, who was invited to present a workshop.

We spent the morning and the first part of the afternoon in Workshops, the second part of each afternoon in General Working groups and Poster sessions. Two evenings were used for observation sessions with telescopes. The General lectures took place at the excursions to ESA - ESTEC and Westerbork. The Sonnenborgh Observatory in Utrecht also was visited and a workshop was organised there using their facilities.

The 8th Summer School was held in YMCA in De Glind. It is necessary to thank the director of this centre for his help during the entire meeting. Without his co-operation and support for the Local Organising Committee, it would not have been possible to run the course as successfully.


Participants at the 8th EAAE Summer School

Rosa M. Ros, Chairperson of the EAAE-SS
and Gert Schooten, Chairperson of Local Organising Committee

Webmaster : Francis Berthomieu <berthomi@ac-nice.fr>
 Last edited October 9th, 2004