Kepler EPO Archive

Material on this page contains links to the Kepler Mission education website preserved on the Internet Archive (Wayback Machine).

About the Mission

Brief History of Kepler, by Bill Borucki

Discoveries

News Items

NASA Kepler Mission educational materials developed at Lawrence Hall of Science:

    • Planetarium Programs - the LHS Planetarium produced the audience participation program Strange Planets that is now part of our Planetarium Activities for Successful Shows (PASS). We also produced three Kepler Mini-shows (~15 minutes in length): Hunting for Water; Inside the Zodiac; and Searching for Other Earths.

    • Museum Exhibit Alien Earths - LHS Exhibits staff participated in development of the major museum exhibit "Alien Earths" and LHS was the pilot venue for the exhibit in a series of exhibition sites coordinated through ASTC.

    • Table-top Models - We developed a few versions of models to simulate what the Kepler Mission does. The models consisted of an orrery (model planet system), a light (model star), and a computer with light sensor and software to analyze changes in the light's brightness as the model planets orbit. Different orreries were made from LEGO parts, K'NEX parts, and a commercially available FOSS Orrery that is used in the FOSS middle school Planetary Science course (https://www.deltaeducation.com/stem-solutions/replacement-parts/foss-orrery).

    • Kepler Starwheel - a do-it-yourself adjustable star map that shows where in the sky Kepler was pointing during its primary 4-year data collection time period. It also shows sky positions of naked-eye stars with exoplanets. It is based on the Lawrence Hall of Science's Star Wheels. See also the original archive page.

    • Computer Interactives -

    • Exoplanet Transit Hunt, a simulation that illustrates how the transit method of planet-finding works and how properties of planets can be calculated from observed drops in brightness of a star. Users select a star to observe, measure its brightness changes, and analyze those changes to determine an exoplanet's size, orbit period, and even its chances of being habitable. [This is a Flash application. To be able to run it on Apple mobile devices, use Puffin browser.] Archive version.

      • LightGrapher, (a Flash application created by UCB undergraduate staff) - allows a computer's camera or webcam to be used as a free light sensor to go with a table top orrery for transit technique simulations.

    • Website* - LHS staff person Alan Gould was the webmaster for the Kepler Mission Education website (kepler.nasa.gov) that included sections for Kepler News, Table of Kepler Discoveries, Computer Interactives, Multimedia, Artwork including the Kepler Art Contest, Handouts & Posters, Presentations, Podcasts, Radio Shows (StarDate), Kepler Awards, and Education Materials. View the website archive.

    • Curriculum Projects

      • A commercial version of table-top model became part of the FOSS Planetary Science classroom kit.Hands-On Universe - HOU A Changing Cosmos curriculum for high school included Tracking Jupiter's Moons (using image processing software to analyze observatory images of Jupiter and its moons) and added the investigation Exoplanet Transits in which students use telescope images and image processing software to determine the size and orbital period of an exoplanet.

      • Transit Tracks - using Kepler light curves to discover planets

* Other pages from the Kepler Mission education website on Internet Archive:

Galleries

For Scientists