Welcome Teachers!

We are happy to present a variety of lesson plans that use data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Our materials will show your students everything from asteroids in our own Solar System to the most distant quasars ever observed! Students can explore the sky using all using the same high-quality data that professional astronomers use.

Go to teacher guides

What does SkyServer offer?

With SkyServer, you and your students will have access to:

• Full color images of almost 14 million objects
• Complete photometric (imaging) data for every object
• Spectra of almost 50,000 objects
• Access to data on almost every type of astronomical object
• Excel workbooks that allow students to save data easily

What types of lessons are available?

SkyServer lessons are written at a variety of levels, for students from grade school through introductory college courses. Lessons are designed to give teachers flexibility to implement them in ways that will fit the time constraints of the class and the abilities of the students.

Lessons are available on a wide variety of topics including:

• The Hubble Diagram
• Colors in Astronomy
• Spectral Types of Stars
• Image Processing
• Asteroids
• The H-R Diagram
• Galaxies
• Sky Surveys
• Quasars

More lesson plans are being added on a regular basis, so check back soon!

What materials are available for teachers?

Teacher's pages are available for all lessons. The teacher's pages include:

• Notes and teaching tips on all lessons
• Sample solutions and scoring rubrics for all questions and exercises
• Strategies to help you fit the lessons into your available time
• Correlations to national Math and Science Standards

How much does this cost?

Nothing!

All materials on SkyServer are available free of charge, including all lesson plans, access to the teacher's pages, and access to all data.

So, how do I access all this material?

All the student lessons can be accessed from the Projects main page. All the teacher's pages can be accessed from the teacher's site.