I’ve been working all weekend on our final documentary. It was really important for us to create a video that would spark interest in the topic while providing a lot of information to our viewers. We tried to incorporate a lot of different types of information to make the video accessible and understandable, and we also wanted to provide an account of our experiences in the woods and our participation in informal science learning.

Here is the link to the final product!

I hope you all enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4IqUHY0BtM&feature=youtu.be

Our trip was great! We got a lot of nice footage in the mountains and had a lot of fun observing sunspots. It was really nice to be able to get out of the city to hike and participate in informal science learning. The Stanford Sun Lab website was a great resource for inexpensive and easy methods to view the sun. I’m bummed we didn’t get to see any sunspots, but I’m sure if I were to do the experiment again on a different day, I might get better results. I also really liked that our observation method was a very simple pinhole camera- as a photographer, it was easy for me to understand how the process worked.

Due to inopportune weather last week, we were unable to make the trip to observe the sunspots. However, the good news is that this Sunday we will hopefully go to Van Cortland park to observe the sunspots and shoot our documentary and we are looking forward to it!

Our trip did not go as planned- it was too cloudy to observe the sun. Fortunately, the Nova sun lab gives us a clear picture of the sun regardless of the weather!

Being able to see the sun everyday and observe the subtle changes is really something! It really makes me wonder how the universe works exactly and how it came to be. Why does the sun have spots and why does it happen to give off electromagnetic particles? It’s amazing how something as far away as the sun’s spots can effect technology here on Earth. The universe and outer space is truly a wondrous place!

We have planned our trip for November 9th to the Catskills. While we are upstate, we are going to observe the sun from different altitudes in the mountains and try our best to observe sunspots and make sunspot drawings. It’ll be exciting to go into nature and experience the sun and its natural effects firsthand. For our observation, we are planning on using a projection technique. It involves two pieces of card stock and a pin hole that will project an image of the sun so that we can observe it without looking directly at it or needing to buy expensive equipment. The instructions are posted here: http://solar-center.stanford.edu/observe/.

It turns out this website has a lot of interesting info about the sun! I would check it out if you’re interested.

So far, as a group, we have been  discussing the importance of sunspots and how we can make it interesting and relatable to our audience. We decided that it would be important to discuss the history of sunspots and why they are relevant to our lives today. We’ve been finding a lot of cool historical info and primary documents that we can include in our presentation! We’re very excited.

Our date is still set for this Saturday, November 9th, to go to the Catskill Mountains and observe sunspots from there. We will film the bulk of our documentary during this time and we are excited to bring back what we will learn from our experience.

We plan to observe sunspots at different times and places and report our findings to NASA through the Citizen Science project SunLab. Sunspots are dark spots on the surface of the sun. Relatively speaking, they’re cooler than the surrounding photosphere. During a sunspot cycle, the Sun can appear brighter, which affects the amount of heat projected toward the earth. Sunspot activity also affects the amount of solar wind and magnetic disturbance, which may influence satellite communication. I believe that this project, however small its effect may be, may help the global communications network.

Given how relatively hectic our respective schedules are, we tentatively decided on an initial observation date at the Catskill Mountains on November 9th. One of my responsibilities is to research ways to observe sunspots safely, such as using binoculars or telescopes to project an image of the sun onto a white surface, where it can be safely sketched. Given the inherently visual nature of our project, we decided to present a documentary as our final digital deliverable. We’d go over what sunspots are, how they affect the earth, our findings, and our journey along the way. Science, as a inquisitive process, affects the investigator, so I’d like to see how our perspectives on the sun and informal science learning change as a result of this experiment. Documentaries are perfect for this, as they allow for an intimate relationship between viewer and narrator, and unparalleled insight into the mindset of the investigator.