Workshop: Exoplanets on Sight 2014

Post date: Jun 06, 2014 6:19:55 PM

The workshop Exoplanets on Sight teach middle-school students about the science and recent discoveries of exoplanets. The workshop is given every Summer as part of the ISMuL's Summer STEM Academy. This year iteration focused on potentially habitable worlds. Students learned about what makes a planet habitable and that not all of them are necessarily equally habitable. A clip from the upcoming movie Almost Home was used to introduce this point in a fun way. The main activity consisted on visualizing exoplanets according to the their surface and atmospheric composition. Students used NASA's Extreme Planet Makeover to visualize planets and explore the stellar and planetary properties required to support habitable planets. Finally, they painted their own planets according to composition, some taking more artistic liberties than others. Below are photographs of the work of the students against a stellar background. Students were encouraged to share their work in social media.

Individual Exoplanet Frames

All Exoplanets