Know what latitude and longitude are. Students meet a challenge that requires use of the Internet for acquiring information, images, or other media. Students get the idea that computers are powerful tools not only for games, but for finding out about many subjects on the worldwide web. Students will learn to use star maps for finding a planet. Students will plot a planet path on star maps with coordinate grids.
Students be able to find out when a planet is visible.
Preparation Visit the JPL ephemeris web site and familiarize yourself with how it works. Decide if you can have students print out star maps during the activity, of if you should print them before hand and make photocopies for each student. Be sure that students have a firm understanding of the concept of celestial coordinates and what an ephemeris is. Visual magnitude and surface brightness 20. One tricky part is judging when a planet is visible at night.