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Classroom Tip

What is a tour?

"Tours" are interactive paths through the night sky, designed to tell a story or teach a particular astronomy concept.  They look like movies, but when viewed in WWT, you can pause the tour to explore regions of the sky that catch your interest, and you can click on hyperlinks throughout the tour to learn more about an object or phenomenon.

You may create a tour using the desktop version of WorldWide telescope.

Here is a screen cast of an example tour, made by Alyssa Goodman, called "Dust and Us."...

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How can I help students with research projects? Where should I point them for ideas for topics and how can I help them use WWT to find more information?

    When choosing topics, try to steer students toward interesting stories, not just facts. (Examples: How does a star form? Where do planetary nebulae come from? What happens when two galaxies collide? What is the evidence for black holes? Why is Neptune blue while Saturn is orange?)

    Don’t feel like you have to tell them all the answers. Teach them to fish instead of giving them fish. “That’s a good question. What do you think?”

    When you do give answers, try to focus your explanations on WHY something is true, HOW we know...

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How do I use Wikipedia from the Finder Scope?

To use Finder Scope to get information from Wikipedia, click on the “Research” button at the bottom of the Finder Scope screen. Click on “Information” and then select “Look up on Wikipedia.”  Make sure to align the Finder Scope with the image that lists only the name of the object, not a title from a press release or from a specific photograph.

Also, keep in mind that not every object in WWT has a Wikipedia page. Many objects that have names that like HIP91792 that seem to be just a string of letters and numbers do not have Wikipedia pages. You may have...

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