Poster ideas

Poster

Here is the page for all of the poster ideas to be put so that the entire team is able to edit and improve all the stuff that will be going on our poster for the airshow.

Who are we?

Our team comprises nine core team members aged 14 to 17 years old from all over the UK who are taking part in the Schome Park Project [1], an educational research initiative led by The Open University. The Schome Park Project uses two private islands on the Teen Grid of the Second Life(r) virtual world, in conjunction with a supporting forum and wiki, to create a novel and engaging learning environment. Our proposal has been developed using each of these mediums. Discussions have taken place during in-world meetings and in the forums, whilst the wiki has served as a space to collate finalised plans. Team members have only ever met once in real life during the visit to SSTL, therefore communication through these "unconventional" mediums has been a critical aspect of the project.

I edited this a bit to make it a bit more concise Topper --Gaea SParker 19:18, 6 July 2008 (BST)

Our Proposal

We propose an instrument, S.C.H.O.M.E. (Spectroscopy, Climate and Habitability from Orbital Measurement of Earthshine) to measure Earthshine - sunlight that is reflected from the Earth. The S.C.H.O.M.E instrument will comprise a pin-hole camera with a lens, that will focus light to a visible/near infra-red spectrometer. Using S.C.H.O.M.E. we will record spectra unique to Earth, that contains features relevant to life:

• Water - without which life on Earth would not be possible. Water's spectral signature affects 700-720 nm wavelengths.
• Oxygen - features at 630 nm, 690 nm and 760 nm
• 'Red Edge' - caused by vegetation absorbing large amounts of certain wavelengths of light, therefore reflecting others to avoid overheating. These reflected wavelengths include that in the infra-red around 700 nm
• Ozone - could be monitored in relation to annual variations and human environmental impact, as its absorption band lies within the visible range (a broad feature over 450-750 nm).

I mixed the two sections to flow better--Gaea SParker 19:33, 6 July 2008 (BST)

Application and Context

Recording Earthshine, we can identify signatures of life and characterise what makes it suitable for sustaining life. These results can be used as a reference for present and future observations of exoplanets, assessing their habitability. Measurements of Earth reflected light (albedo) can also be input to climate models, advancing our understanding of our rapidly changing planet (or something?!).

I edited a bit and copied some text from the proposal about the climate model suff, though it is a bit "fluffy" as I don't really know anything about it - it sounds good though!--Gaea SParker 20:35, 6 July 2008 (BST)

State of Play

After meeting engineers at SSTL, we are working to resolve flaws in our instrument design - mainly optics issues! As our instrument design evolves, we are also finalising our expense, power, and mass budgets.

I included this section to explain where we were with ideas and thought it would give a sprt of conclusion/end point for the poster. --Gaea SParker 20:35, 6 July 2008 (BST) I know a lot of info has been taken out - but Olly and I will be there, we have read the proposal a million times so the poster is just a "prompt card" fopr us to explain the whole project etc.

Suggestions

Any ideas, suggestions, questions and other general stuff about the poster or project, please stick them here.√[]