Live From Mars ended in December 1997. Please see Mars Team Online for a more recent project about Mars.

NOTES FOR TEACHER USING MARS MYSTERY SPOTGAME:

These four mini-lessons are presented in sequential order, building skill sets required for each lesson.

The learner will use ratios expressed as multiplication problems, the Cartesian coordinate system, pixel luminosity value expressed as (V), arrays, and processing tools within the application NIH Image to compare, contrast and find specific geological features and arrays of pixels of Warrego Vallis on Mars.

I am using the four mini-lessons (Mars Mystery Spot) in a middle school classroom setting with at least 20 working Macs. Student contact is 45 minutes per mini lesson. All lessons are written at an 8th grade reading level. I have specified resources so you can acquire them if you wish.

In addition to student handouts for each mini-lesson, students fill out a "Learning Log" for each class. This form asks the student to identify themselves, what tools they used, what they did, what they learned, and any problems or questions they have. These logs are kept in the student's portfolio.

This lesson is modified and rolled over from the "Jupiter imaging" unit of the "Live From Hubble Space Telescope" Project. During that electronic field trip, I field tested all four mini-lessons with two groups of 7th graders.

The information below is about the image you will be using:

Original Image file name=WV/MI40S092.IMG

• Where WV stand for Warrego Vallis
• M stands for the file identity. In this case tiles of a Global map of Mars called MDIMs ( Mars Digital Image Maps).
• I is the resolution code for this image. This image has a resolution of (1/256 degrees per pixel) or (0.231 kilometers per pixel)
• 40S means this image is centered at 40 degrees south latitude.
• 092 means this image is centered at 92 degrees west longitude.
• IMG is the images graphic file type.

NOTE- All longitudes on Mars are measured to the west.

Activities

• Activity A: Making Observations
  • Teacher handout
  • Student handout
• Activity B: Magnifying Pixels
  • Teacher handout
  • Student handout
• Activity C: Processing the image of Warrego Vallis
  • Teacher handout
  • Student handout
• Activity D: Analyzing Warrego Vallis one array of pixels at a time
  • Teacher handout
  • Student handout