I have a lot of interest in education and outreach. Currently, I work as an undergraduate TA for the lab portions of ASU’s Intro Astronomy for Non-Majors (AST 111 and AST 112). This page is for examples of what I have created for the purpose of astronomy (and science generally) education and outreach.
I’ve been TAing for ASU introductory astronomy classes (with Dr. Rogier Windhorst and Dr. Karen Knierman) for the past 2 semesters, as well as this semester (Fall 2026). During this time I have made a few things to help with teaching, slide decks to introduce topics, an extra credit quiz, and I have spent some effort trying to get students to stop having an AI model complete their assigmnents for them.
When teaching a lab, I usually start with a brief, 5-10 minute presentation introducing/reviewing the topic with the students. During my first semester as a TA, I mainly used slides made by other TAs in previous years with a few updates where needed. My second semester as a TA I started writing the slides myself both to help me refresh my own understanding of the topics, and so I could more effectively present the information. These slides, and any notes or comments about them. are below and more will be added as I write them for the current and future semesters (some labs are used for both AST 111 and AST 112). Note that I typically rewrite the slides when I teach the lab again, using the old version as a reference. Again, this is to make sure I remember the material and can teach it more effectively, as well as to account for the significant changes made to most of the labs over summer 2026. Presentations for the same lab but in different semesters are grouped together, otherwise they are in the order they were written and used. The different versions are labeled with the first letter of the semester (Spring or Fall) and the year.
Spectroscopy
(S26)
The agressively green background is the rgb/hex code for the frequency of light that the solar spectrum peaks at (assuming your monitor is properly calbrated) as calculated in the lab. The “Scattering” slide at the end was not used as I couldn’t find a good place to fit it into the rest of the slideshow. Also, conversion to a .pdf format means the animated image on slid 9 is no longer animated.
(F26)
I slightly adjusted the green to better match what I intended. I also have 2 announcements slides because the week after this lab is when the schedule starts to get complicated from holidays/school breaks, meaning the two sections I teach have different announcements for awhile in terms of what time we are meeting the following week.
Parallax and Proper Motion
(S26)
Intro to the Night Sky
(S26)
(F26)
Slide 4, with the image of the Pleiades, was used to talk about how the story of the Pleiades is hypothesized to be one of humanities oldest stories, because of the similarities across diverse cultures, especially regarding the number 7 in relation to the cluster. There are 7 named stars in the cluster, but only 6 are visible with the averge human’s naked eye - the last time 7 would have been visible to the average person was ~100,000 years ago (Museum of Science).
Intro to Telescopes
(S26)
Unfortunately, putting it into .pdf form means the joke .gif on slide 10 is no longer animated. Slides 2 and 3 were borrowed from a pre-existing set of slides written by an unknown TA in a prior semester.
(F26)
Same note about the .gif, this time on slide 8.
Magnitudes and Stellar Brightness
(S26)
The picture on the top right of slide 11 is of the Orion Nebula, it was taken by me by jamming my cell phone camera against the eyepiece of one of the telescopes and holding it still for a couple second exposure - this was just before the lab, when the other TAs and I were setting up the telescopes for it.
General Observing
(S26)
Slides 13, 19, 20, and 21 were not used. Slide 24 was in case of bad weather keeping us inside as the forecast could have gone either way (but ended up being clear).
Variable Stars
(S26)
The formatting on slide 7 seems to have gotten a bit messed up when I converted it to a .pdf, the cutoff word should be on a new line and says “parallax”.
HR Diagrams
(S26)
Same green as Spectroscopy S26, this lab was done on the same day as the Artemis II launch, and we spent the first 20 minutes of class (and some time before) watching the livestream of it. I let it continue playing while the students worked after I had introduced the lab.
Open Clusters
(S26)
The mnemonic at the bottom of slide 4 is from a professor from one of my earlier classes and was suggested as a less objectionable alternative to the traaditional one.
Galaxy Morphology
(S26)
The title slide and some of the images were borrowed from another set of slides written by an unknown TA in a previous semester; labeled only with the name “Hanson”.
Hubble Expansion
(S26)
Intro/Scientific Models
(F26)
Lunar Phases
(F26)
All the other labs had been taught before in previous semesters, this was a new lab for this semester.
Coordinate Systems
(F26)
Orbital Motion
(S26)
At the end of my first semester as a TA, Dr. Windhorst gave the TAs permission to create their own extra credit assignments for their students. Not everyone did, but I wrote this quiz.
The questions came from several sources. Some came from another TA’s extra credit quiz, some were modified from astronomy textbooks, and others I wrote entirely myself. The quiz was intended to be difficult but not impossible for students at this level. All questions were free response so students could show as much work as they wanted - I graded it on both correctness and effort. The amount of extra credit was up to one full lab. For the sake of keeping this page organized, the quiz (in the form of screenshots) and answers are on a different page, found here.
I’m not entirely happy with all of the borrowed questions, as they are primarily having students do calculations that they haven’t really learned how to do or what they mean at this level. In future versions I would want to focus on questions like the last three, where they need to apply ideas they have learned and sometimes synthesise new ideas building on what they learned in class.