Written by Doris Daou
Spitzer Science Center

The Spitzer Science Center (SSC) with the collaboration of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO) has designed a program for teacher and student research using observing time on the Spitzer Space Telescope. The participating teachers will attend a fall 2004 workshop to become familiar with the Spitzer Space Telescope archives and to receive training in infrared astronomy and observational techniques. The teachers will also attend a workshop offered by the SSC to learn about the observation planning process and telescope and instrument capabilities.

This program has as its goals the fundamental NASA goals of inspiring and motivating students to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics as well as to engage the public in shaping and sharing the experience of exploration and discovery. The educational plan addresses the NASA objectives of improving student proficiency in science and improving science instruction by providing a unique opportunity to a group of teachers and students to observe with Spitzer and work with Spitzer archival data. This program allows a team of 12 teachers and their students to utilize up to 3 hours of Director's discretionary observing time on the Spitzer Space Telescope for educational observations.

Leveraging on a well-established teacher professional development, the SSC is offering this program to teachers in the Teacher Leaders in Research Based Science Education (TLRRBSE), an ongoing program at the NOAO. This NSF-sponsored program touches the formal education community through a national audience of well-trained and supported middle and high school teachers.

The Spitzer educational research program also reaches an additional national audience of students through an informal education program Astronomy Camp based at the University of Arizona. During this camp, the teachers and their students will learn about Spitzer through the vast amount of data available in the Spitzer archives.

JPL manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. JPL is a division of Caltech.

The TLRBSE Project is funded by the National Science Foundation under ESI 0101982, funded through the AURA/NSF Cooperative Agreement AST-9613615. NOAO is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), Inc. under cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation.