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The Sun, Moon, planets, and stars have accompanied sky watchers over millennia. The Pleiades star cluster, observable from every continent except Antarctica, is tied to Indigenous worldviews, astronomy, calendaring, traditional weaving, weather prediction, and agriculture. The heliacal rising of the cluster—its first visible sighting in the morning twilight before sunrise, is particularly significant. For the original peoples of Polynesia, Mesoamerica, and the Andes, the Pleiades continue to be a source of knowledge, both culturally and scientifically. Due to the loss of Indigenous languages and the pressures of globalization, the knowledge is eroding at a fast pace. We describe a Fulbright U.S. Global Scholar project and emerging results from collaborative research conducted in ancestral lands with Indigenous elders, young adults, and academics, as well as with other knowledge holders in Aotearoa/New Zealand, Guatemala, and Peru. Results are being shared locally for the benefit of the host communities and future generations.

ABSTRA C T We present observations of the Li I 6708 Adoublet in the z Oph sightline, obtained at a resolution of , 10 6 and a signal-to-noise ratio of , 1200, together with supplementary observations of K I l7699 and the Na I l3302 doublet. These observations marginally resolve the main ' 2 15 km s 21 ' system into its two principal clouds; we model the data using standard physical assumptions, but in a statistically rigorous manner, taking fully into account the hyperfine, doublet and isotopic structure for each species, in each cloud, using a new code, VAPID. The average 7 Li/ 6 Li ratio determined in this sightline is 1:12 ^ 0:20 dex (68 per cent confidence interval), in excellent agreement with the solar-system (meteoritic) value. The ratios in the individual clouds are determined with less precision, but are also consistent with the solar-system value, as is the total lithium abundance (with little evidence for depletion). The thermal and 'turbulent' broadening in the two clouds is discussed on the basis of observed line widths.

We describe a partnership approach in place at UC Berkeley's Center for Extreme Ultraviolet Astrophysics (CEA) that: (a) facilitates the adaptation of astrophysics data and information from NASA and other sources for use in the K-12 classroom, (b) facilitates scientists’ participation in astronomy education, and (c) engages a sustained collaboration typically including personnel from research institutions, centers of informal science teaching such as museums and planetaria, university-based schools of education, and K-12 schools. We are investigating several ways of engaging scientists in partnerships for the purpose of making their research results accessible in appropriate ways to the K-12 community via Internet and World Wide Web technologies. Our investigation addresses the hypothesis that the transition of scientific data and research results from the workplace to the classroom can be facilitated by the joint creation of curriculum materials by teams of cognitive experts, subject-matter experts, and teachers.

In this paper we describe two aspects of an Internet-based lesson plan development project called “Science On-Line-Earth and Space Science for the Classroom.” First, we discuss the design of the Science On-Line (SOL) Project, which focuses on building a community of practice, appropriate task and setting, and contact with the scientific workplace. Second, we examine strategies teachers used as they approached the task of creating Internet-based science lesson plans for the World Wide Web. Based on the analysis of data gathered during the various project phases, results show that the teacher-developed strategies have varying degrees of effectiveness in facilitating Internet-based lesson plan design, information-gathering, and organization. We describe how the strategies began to evolve into formulated practices for Internet-based lesson development within the SOL teacher community. The SOL investigation develops a case study of the strategies and emerging practices in the context of the creation and pilot-testing of Internet-based lesson plans. This case study may serve as an exemplar of tested Internet-based lesson development strategies and practices for the educational community.

The Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer mission is described. For the first six months, an all-sky survey will be carried out covering 90 to 750 Å, or essentially the entire extreme ultraviolet (EUV) bandpass. This EUV survey will be made in four bands, or colors: λλ 90-150 Å, 170-250 Å, 400-600 Å, and 550-750 Å. A portion of the sky which is free from the normally intense 304 Å geocoronal helium background will be surveyed at greater sensitivity; the wavelength coverage of this band is from 90 to 400 Å. Following the sky survey portion of the mission, spectroscopy of individual sources will be carried out. Three spectrometers employing novel variable line-space gratings will provide spectra with ~1 Å resolution over the band from 70 to 760 Å. This spectroscopy will be carried out by guest observers chosen by NASA in a manner roughly analogous to the International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE) guest observer program.

Exhibits and programs at hands-on science centers, museums, and on the web can be used to increase science literacy in optics and photonics. These informal science education efforts play a profound role in increasing the public's understanding of optics and photonics and its applications. Informal science education also plays a significant role in interesting young children in the photonics field. This paper presents a tour of the informal science education world and describes how scientists can work with science centers. It also describes how science centers and museums have made use of web broadcasts of special events such as eclipses to enhance public interest in science topics.

Sharing the Sun-Earth Connection-the effects of our active Sun on geospace and beyond-is the primary goal of NASA's Sun-Earth Connection Education Forum (SECEF). SECEF is one of twelve national centers of space science education and public outreach (EPO) funded by NASA's Office of Space Science. SECEF is a partnership between NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center and UC Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory. We coordinate individual education and public outreach efforts from NASA Sun-earth Connection missions and research programs, facilitating scientist involvement. SECEF develops products and sponsors programs in partnership with the pre-college and informal education communities that maximize the impact of individual efforts. We will show several examples of high-visibility products and programs for broad audiences that adapt and highlight Sun-Earth Connection data, research results, and scientist involvement.

The primary scientific objective of the High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (HESSI) Small Explorer mission selected by NASA is to investigate the physics of particle acceleration and energy release in solar flares. Observations will be made of x-rays and (gamma) rays from approximately 3 keV to approximately 20 MeV with an unprecedented combination of high resolution imaging and spectroscopy. The HESSI instrument utilizes Fourier- transform imaging with 9 bi-grid rotating modulation collimators and cooled germanium detectors. The instrument is mounted on a Sun-pointed spin-stabilized spacecraft and placed into a 600 km-altitude, 38 degrees inclination orbit.It will provide the first imaging spectroscopy in hard x-rays, with approximately 2 arcsecond angular resolution, time resolution down to tens of ms, and approximately 1 keV energy resolution; the first solar (gamma) ray line spectroscopy with approximately 1-5 keV energy resolution; and the first solar (gamma) -ray line and continuum imaging,with approximately 36-arcsecond angular resolution. HESSI is planned for launch in July 2000, in time to detect the thousands of flares expected during the next solar maximum.

Evaluation and assessments of informal education programs, small or large, such as science museum traveling exhibits, interpretive kiosks, hands-on activities and very large public programs have been challenging due to the diverse nature of objectives, setups, and expected outcomes of these programs. Almost all institutions that develop and present IE programs include, in their staff, evaluation specialists. However, for very large public outreach efforts, which include participation of many institutions located across the country, larger evaluation groups/institutions can contribute more objective and extensive evaluation and assessment instruments. Such instruments will help to identify whether the program was successful and if the learning objectives were achieved. They can also lead to ‘lessons learned’ for future events and serve as possible model evaluation instruments for informal education institutions/museums/science centers where the budgets do not allow for contracting independent reviewers. The Eclipse 2001 event was developed and executed with the partnership of the Sun-Earth Connection Education Forum, (SECEF), The Exploratorium (the Museum of Science, Art and Human Perception, in San Francisco), and NASA’s STEREO Mission. American Institutes for Research (AIR), an independent evaluation company from Boston was contracted to develop and implement the evaluation.

Project LINK (A Live and Interactive Network of Knowledge), is a collaboration of Eureka Scientific, Inc., the San Francisco exploratorium Science Museum, and NASA/Ames Research Center. Project LINK has demonstrated video-conferencing capabilities from the Kuiper Airborne Observatory (KAO) to the San Francisco Exploratorium in the context of science education outreach to K-12 teachers and students. The project was intended to pilot-test strategies for facilitating the live interface between scientists and K-12 teachers aboard the KAO with their peers and students through the resources and technical expertise available at science museums and private industry. The interface was based on Internet/macintosh video conferencing capabilities which allowed teachers and students at the Exploratorium to collaborate in a live and interactive manner with teachers and scientists aboard the KAO. The teachers teams chosen for the on-board experiments represented rural and urban school districts in California. The teachers interfaced with colleagues as part of the NASA-Funded Project FOSTER (Flight Opportunities for Science Teacher Enrichment).

We present high S/N (greater than 800) Goddard High-Resolution Spectrograph (GHRS) observations of the weak interstellar O I lambda 1356 absorption in the low-density sight lines toward iota Ori and kappa Ori. By comparing these data with observations toward more reddened stars, we find no evidence of density-dependent depletion from the gas phase for oxygen. The derived total oxygen abundance (gas plus grains) towards iota Ori and kappa Ori is consistent with stellar and nebular determinations in Orion at a level that is one-half the solar value. We speculate that the O/H abundance ratio is lower in Orion compared to the Sun because the local Milky Way has suffered a recent infall of metal-poor material, perhaps from the Magellanic Stream.

We compile, from the existing literature, the largest sample to date (842 data points) of hydrogen column density measurements, N(H I), of the gas in the interstellar medium. We include only results obtained from absorption measurements toward individual stars (594 in our sample) in an effort to construct a three-dimensional picture of the interstellar gas. We derive hydrogen column densities toward a fraction of the stars in the sample from published column density measurements of metal ions. A three-dimensional physical model derived from this data set will be presented in a companion paper. The observed stars span distances from a few parsecs to a few thousand parsecs, and more than half of the sample serves to describe the local interstellar medium within a few hundred parsecs of the Sun. Hydrogen column densities range from 10(exp 17) to 10(exp 22)/sq cm. We describe here the various observational methods used to estimate the hydrogen column densities and present the table with the stellar and hydrogen column density data. The provided table is intended as a global reference work, not to introduce new results.

We present the results of a recently completed effort to determine the amount of CN rotational excitation in five diffuse interstellar clouds for the purpose of accurately measuring the temperature of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR). In addition, we report a new detection of emission from the strongest hyperfine component of the 2.64 mm CN rotational transition (N = 1-0) in the direction toward HD 21483. We have used this result in combination with existing emission measurements toward our other stars to correct for local excitation effects within diffuse clouds which raise the measured CN rotational temperature above that of the CMBR. After making this correction, we find a weighted mean value of T(CMBR) = 2.729 (+0.023, -0.031) K. This temperature is in excellent agreement with the new COBE measurement of 2.726 +/- 0.010 K (Mather et al., 1993). Our result, which samples the CMBR far from the near-Earth environment, attests to the accuracy of the COBE measurement and reaffirms the cosmic nature of this background radiation. From the observed agreement between our CMBR temperature and the COBE result, we conclude that corrections for local CN excitation based on millimeter emission measurements provide an accurate adjustment to the measured rotational excitation.

High S/N, high-resolution observations of the interstellar Li absorption lines toward the stars Zeta Ophiuchi and Zeta Persei are reported. Li I line profiles indicate the presence of both the Li-7 and Li-6 doublets in these two sightlines. Best-fit values for the interstellar Li-7/Li-6 isotope ratio are 6.8 (+1.4/-1.7) towards Zeta Ophiuchi and 5.5 (+ 1.3/-1.1) toward Zeta Persei. Measurement of 6.8 (+1.4/-1.7) for the interstellar Li-7/Li-6 isotope ratio towards Zeta Ophiuchi does not support the lower limit of 25 determined by Ferlet and Dennefeld (1984). The current value of the interstellar Li-7/Li-6 isotope ratio is the result of various lithium production and destruction processes involving stars, cosmic rays, and the big bang.

The Lick Observatory Reticon (LOR) data presented in Hawkins et al. (1985) are reanalyzed in order to determine the cause of the significant discrepancy in (C-12)/(C-13) isotope ratios determined on the basis of observations of this isotope in the interstellar medium toward Zeta Ophiuchi and Xi Persei. A new set of Lick Observatory observations toward Zeta Oph are obtained using a CCD detector. The KPNO coude feed echelle spectrograph and a CCD detector are used to carry out high-resolution, high SNR ratio observations toward Zeta Oph and Xi Per. The LOR results for Zeta Oph are uncertain, ranging to 40 to 60, owing to the error in continuum placement. The KPNO results toward Zeta Oph are (C-12)H/(C-13)H(+)(0, 0) = 63 +/- 8, (C-12)H(+)/(C-13)H(+)(1, 0) = 67 +/- 19, and (C-12)N/(C-13)N = 100 + 88/- 33. Toward Xi Per, the KPNO measurements yield (C-12)H(+)/(C-13)H(+) = 49 +/- 15 from the 4232-A band, and a lower limit of 45 from the 3957-A observations.

High-resolution, high signal-to-noise observations of interstellar CN toward Zeta Per are performed to determine the C-12/C-13 isotope ratio in this line of sight. Observations of (C-12)N/(C-13)N in several diffuse clouds are performed to assess whether CN suffers from isotope-selective effects. Values are obtained which are higher than the value toward Zeta Oph determined by Crane and Hegyi (1988) and lower than the results toward the more reddened stars HD 21483 obtained by Meyer et al. (1989) and Palazzi et al. (1990). Theory and observations indicate the existence of a spatial C-12/C-13 gradient which decreases toward the Galactic center at an approximate rate of 12 percent/kpc at the distance of the solar radius. It is argued that since a gradient of this character cannot explain the CN results, isotope-selective effects provide a more likely explanation for the large range in (C-12)N/(C-13)N ratios.

High-resolution, high SNR observations of CH and CH(+) toward Zeta Oph, Xi Per, and P Cyg are used to test several predictions of shock models of molecule formation. The predicted differences between the CH and HCH(+) heliocentric velocities of the magnitude produced by the shock theories are not found in any of the three stars. toward Zeta Oph and Xi Per, no difference is found, based on high-quality data, between the observed CH(+) lie profiles and a Gaussian function which would be expected as a result of shock structure. Gaussian line width parameters of CH(+) lines toward Zeta Oph and Xi Per are broad as predicted by shock models are consistent with previous measurements. These observations yield only weak evidence in favor of the predictions of shock models of molecule formation. 40 refs.

Initial results from the analysis of the Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer (EUVE) all-sky survey (58-740 A) and deep survey (67-364 A) are presented through the EUVE Bright Source List (BSL). The BSL contains 356 confirmed extreme ultraviolet (EUV) point sources with supporting information, including positions, observed EUV count rates, and the identification of possible optical counterparts. One-hundred twenty-six sources have been detected longward of 200 A.

The possibility that the whole microwave background can be produced by a bright population of pregalactic stars at a redshift of a few hundred is explored. The radiation is thermalized by a combination of amorphous silicate, amorphous carbon, graphite, and needle-shaped conducting grains which give rise to the opacity needed at wavelengths greater than 3 cm. The occurrence of distortion in a primordial microwave background spectrum due to its interaction with Population III stars and dust is investigated. The possibility of producing deviations small enough to be consistent with the best available observations, but still detectable by COBE, is considered.

High-SNR observations of the (1,0) and (0,0) vibrational bands of interstellar CN near 3580 and 3874 A toward HD 21483 are reported. The CN line strengths yield excitation temperatures of 2.83 + or - 0.09 and 2.76 + or - 0.07 K for the J = 1-2 and J = 0-1 rotational transitions at 1.32 mm and 2.64 mm. It is noted that in the absence of local CN excitation, these values represent the brightness temperatures of the cosmic background radiation (CMB) at these wavelengths. No CN emission is noted at 2.64 mm in the HD 21483 line of sight, setting a 2-sigma upper limit of 0.11 K on the contribution of local processes to the J = 0-1 excitation temperature. 24 refs.

Observations of interstellar CH(+) toward Zeta Oph were performed to determine the C-12/C-13 isotope ratio in this diffuse cloud. The very high signal-to-noise ratio spectra yield 6 sigma detections of the (C-13)H(+) features at 4232 A and 3957 A; a weighted mean C-12/C-13 ratio of 43 + or - 6 (1 sigma) is obtained. The uncertainty includes the contribution of continuum placement errors, statistical channel-to-channel signal fluctuations, and the error introduced in deconvolving the blended isotopic lines at 4232 A. This result indicates a decrease in the local galactic C-12/C-13 ratio by a factor of 2 during the 4.6 billion yr since the formation of the sun.

Data from observations of Xi Per, P Cyg, 20 Tau, and 23 Tau, obtained at 4232 and 3957 A using a coude spectrograph and a 1872-element reticon on the 3-m Shane telescope at Lick Observatory during 1984-1985, are combined with data on Zeta Oph (Hawkins et al., 1985) and used to estimate the C isotope ratio of the ISM near the sun. The results are presented in extensive tables and graphs and characterized in detail. The (C-12)H(+)/(C-13)H(+) abundance ratios toward the five stars are found to agree to within 12 percent and shown to be representative of the C-12/C-13 ratios in the gas, strongly indicating that the local ISM is homogeneous. The difference between the ISM ratio (43 + or - 4) and the solar-system value (89) is attributed to the chemical evolution of the ISM in the 4.9 Gyr since the formation of the sun.