Investigating Astronomy

Investigating Astronomy is the first comprehensive astronomy textbook written specifically for high school students. This book includes all the major topics in an astronomy course with material to engage students in hands-on investigations and tools to help students learn in interactive and meaningful ways. The book also focuses on scientific inquiry; the process of making scientific claims and supporting them with evidence; and using scientific reasoning to justify and revise those claims.

Units include:

Unit 1 — Investigating Motions of the Sky
Unit 2 — Investigating the Sun-Earth-Moon System
Unit 3 — Investigating Planets
Unit 4 — Investigating Tools of Astronomy
Unit 5 — Investigating Stars
Unit 6 — Investigating the Universe

Each unit has a series of Explorations based on an Essential Question that guides learning. The Explorations prepare students for the unit Challenge, a project that makes use of all information presented in the unit.

Investigating Astronomy provides a Web-Based Data Center

The Investigating Astronomy Data Center, used in many of the curriculum activities, gives students a sense of working with real data using tools that are similar to those astronomers use, but with an interface that does not require a steep learning curve.

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation (DRL-0352180).