Meanwhile, to get ready to use the new large format camera, Professor Greg Bothun has created a JAVA applet that allows handling of FITS images. Teacher Dave Johnson, from Roseburg, has also located several pieces of software for MACs to handle FITS format. We will hold a workshop about Richard Berry's new software in February. I recently completed an outreach campaign through the Rogue Valley in SW Oregon, I'll try to do another down that way in the Spring, to visit schools that I wasn't able to schedule on this trip. No, because stars are at various distances.
Stars vary in brightness due to a number of factors, the most prevalent is their distance.
Constellations are 3-D, not flat patterns. Space may have a very great depth. Use styrofoam spheres as stars to make this 3-D model in your classroom, thus illustrating the depth of space and the true construction of constellations. Meteors are small grains of dust that rapidly burn at high temperature as they pass into Earth's upper atmosphere. The dissipating comet leaves these grains as a trail, and Earth's orbit may annually intersect a trail, thus the shower.