Forest Park Middle School Eighth Grade Science Students Visit the Stephen F. Austin State University Planetarium

By Kay Ray, Longview ISD Foundation executive director, who interviewed students following the academic field trip

Kristi McAdams and Danieshia Terrell Ramsire, Forest Park Middle School science teachers, received $4,298 from the Longview ISD Foundation, Inc. so they could take 154 eighth graders to Stephen F. Austin State University to visit the planetarium on the campus.  The planetarium is one of the most sophisticated in Texas with a fifty foot diameter nano-seam dome and a state-of-the-art Digistar projection system that can project the night sky of stars and planets as seen from anywhere on the Earth with digital precision.

The eighth grade science curriculum includes learning about the solar system, specifically how the tilted Earth rotates on its axis, causing day and night, and revolves around the Fun, causing changes in seasons; learning about the components of the universe, including stars, nebulae, and galaxies and using models, such as the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, for classification; and learning the life cycles of stars and comparing and classifying them.

First, the trip was a success because many students had never visited Nacogdoches, seen the SFA campus, or visited a planetarium. They enjoyed the forested beauty of the campus and the opportunity to have lunch outside near the wooded campus areas. 

After arriving at the planetarium, the science learning began to meet the goal of the grant: to give students the opportunity to explore parts of the solar system and have the solar system come alive so that students could visualize the solar system in a way that they cannot in a classroom.   Through a time lapse presentation, students learned how stars are formed, how long they survive, and how they die.

Stars proceed through a life cycle: birth, main sequence, old age, and death and remnants, a life cycle like a human’s life cycle. 

Stars are born from giant clouds of dust and gas called nebular. The star proceeds to the protostar phase that collapses the nebula, beginning the formation of the star.  Next, the star enters its main sequence where it spends ninety percent of its life. 
Students learned that the star’s mass determines its life cycle. 

Students explained that the more mass the star has, the shorter its life span.  Low mass stars are the smallest, dimmest, and coldest, and because they burn their very slowly, they can live for ten to fifty billion years.  Medium mass stars burn orange and yellow and live from five to fifteen billion years.  Students reported that the Sun is a medium mass star with a lifespan of eleven to twelve billion years.  High mass stars are hot, glowing blue and white, but they only live for a few billion years, ending their lives with a big explosion.  Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, is a blue high mass star. Students learned that the death of a star could end by being sucked into a black hole. 

Students learned about the constellations that are visible to the naked eye, but they learned exactly how to connect the stars to see the signs of the Zodiac, the Big Dipper, and the Little Dipper.  Students were impressed that the planetarium showed them the night sky in the East Texas area so that they know what they are seeing as they look at the night sky. 

Students also learned about the Milky Way and the planets and their relationship to each other.

As the students concluded their interview, they reflected upon their trip and how it caused them to observe the night sky more often and look for the constellations and think about all the activity in the solar system that we cannot see. 

The Foundation is proud to have offered this discovery opportunity to Forest Park’s students.