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Educational websites

 

The ESERO project: the European Space Education Resource Office (ESERO) project has been created by the ESA education office.

The ESA kids website: space for kids with a dedicated space for teachers as well.

ESA Education

 

EDUCATIONAL APPLICATIONS

 

ESA star mapper: an application with data from the Hipparcos mission

ESA Sky: an application to visualise data sets of the ESA Science missions

ESA Gaia family portrait: an application made to illustrate the Gaia Data Release 2 data set and how to create a Hertzsprung-Russell diagram from it.

Gaia Sky: an application to visualise data sets, specifically developed for Gaia, but with the ability to show many different data sets as well.

 

Gaia models

 

Find a downloadable 3D model for Gaia from the ESA Scifleet webpage. Downloads from this page.

 

Gaia mission related teacher material

Find here a non-exhaustive list of webpages with teacher material related to the Gaia mission as created by members of the Gaia community. The content on these pages is the responsibility of the respective institutes and we cannot guarantee this material remains accessible.

 

Citizen Science projects

Currently, a citizen science project is running on classifying variable stars. Find more information on the GaiaVari webpage.

 

Open and freely accessible Gaia data on stars, asteroids and galaxies

Gaia mission data is open to all and freely accessible from this website. Help information is available on how to access the data, with tutorials and special Jypiter notebooks.

 

Education Materials

 

Gaia LEGO Model

Building instructions to build your very own mini-Gaia spacecraft are provided thanks to Willliam Taylor.

More building instructions for another small Gaia spacecraft made from bricks, as provided through Bricksat.

A small tribute is given to ESA's 3D galaxy mapper Gaia in the new LEGO Milky Way set. A 4-piece mini Gaia spacecraft!

 

Gaia Paper Model

Hobby model maker John Jogerst created two Gaia paper models, one in 1:50 and one in 1:100 scale. The models can be cut out and glued together. Download the PDF in English here. The models, with instructions, are also available in Spanish, German and French (translated by J.M. Carrasco, H. Voss and C. Turon). An image of the completed models is available here.

 

Little Books of Gaia

The Little Books of Gaia are A4-page-size summaries of the Gaia mission for children and young adults which can be folded into little booklets. They are available in six different languages (English, French, Spanish, German, Italian and Dutch).

 

Hipparcos Star Globe

The Hipparcos Star Globe depicts the celestial sphere that was astrometrically viewed as a whole for the first time by the Hipparcos satellite. Printed onto two sheets of A4 paper, the globe can be assembled to form a 3D star map. Images of the globe components, instructions for assembling the globe, and an accompanying booklet giving some background information on the Hipparcos mission are available.

 

Gaia Colour-Me

A colouring book image of the Gaia satellite for young children. Download the PDF here.
A colouring book image of the Gaia satellite, free to be used for educational purposes. The image was drawn by A. Titarenko. Download the PNG-file here.

 

ESA Gaia Vodcast

In this vodcast Rebecca Barnes discovers the motions of the stars, learns how astronomers measure their distances and looks at Gaia, the European mission that will really get to grips with our place in the Universe.

For more information, and to view the vodcast, visit the ESA International Year of Astronomy website.