stella

Stella

This is a stellar astronomy simulation suitable for an astronomy unit in high school (though they will never plumb its depths) or in an introductory astronomy course (where they ought to).

We observe a chunk of sky that has a couple of open clusters as well as background stars. We can measure stellar position and brightness, and take spectra of stars as well as of discharge tubes in the lab. It's quite detailed and true to life. There is a lot to discover.

There is also complexity in the data. The user has CODAP tables for...

• The star catalog (407 cases)
• Photometry results
• Spectroscopy results
• Other results

The "other results" can contain simple results such as x or y astrometric observations, or more complex conclusions such as a stellar temperature. So it's heterogeneous. This creates the (unsolved) problem of coping with tidy data sets: the table itself has very general and flexible columns for type and values (and things like units) so that very differing results can be stored as, for example, {x : 67.2, temp 14500}.

The format of that table, and other things, work together to make this an interesting and computational-thinking-rich data analysis experience for students, even those not studying astronomy. "Awash in data" R Us.

Files

• stella.html: the usual: the UI and paths to included js files

• stella.css: styling stella.html.

• stella.js: defines the global stella as well as stella.constants, where version is defined. Also contains a number of utility functions important to astronomy, such as 3D distance and the conversions between luminosity and magnitude.

• stella.manager.js:

• stella.model.js:

• stella.options.js:

• stella.ui.js:

• stella.connector.js:

• stella.badges.js:

• stella.share.js:

• stella.player.js:

• stella.skyView.js:

• stella.photometryManager.js:

• stella.spectrumManager.js:

• elementalSpectra.js:

classes

• Line.js:
• Planet.js:
• Spectrum.js:
• SpectrumView.js:
• Star.js:
• System.js: