Observe Mars in 3D
March 13, 2009
Still have some of those promotional 3D glasses kicking around from after the Superbowl? Fire up one of NASA’s 3D image galleries to take your students on a tour of Mars.
When the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity landed on the red planet in 2004, they began sending back views of Mars that had never been seen before. NASA has an entire gallery devoted to just 3D images taken by Spirit and Opportunity, and students can explore from their classroom. Pull the shades, set up an LCD projector, hand out the glasses, and have your students observe the landscape. What do they see? What do they want to know more about? Remind them that this is how real scientists work, using the same images. After hearing your students observations, see how well they match up with what the NASA scientists explain in the captions.
Mars isn’t the only place to go — now you CAN look directly at the sun (okay, a picture of the sun , the old rule still applies for the real sun) to see it in 3D, too. -GRETCHEN SCHAEFER
