Try It At Home: Life Cycle of a Massive Star Activity
- By Maggie Masetti
- September 13, 2012
- Comments Off on Try It At Home: Life Cycle of a Massive Star Activity
Stars and planets form in the dark, inside vast, cold clouds of gas and dust. The James Webb Space Telescope’s large mirror and infrared sensitivity will let astronomers peer inside dusty knots where the youngest stars and planets are forming.
The Webb telescope project has developed a bookmark and an activity that you can try at home, with an after school club, or in the classroom to learn more about the life cycles of stars – from birth in a dusty nebula, through developmental changes, death, and then rebirth.
This informal education activity, where colored pony beads are strung on the bookmark, each representing a phase of the star’s life, can be used with kids ranging from late elementary school to middle school. The activity might be young for high schoolers, but you could go more in depth with the science for this age group.
Download the bookmark (pdf) and the activity (pdf).
