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When you look up at the night sky, have you ever wondered why some stars are brighter than others? This lesson will teach you how to build a scaled model and visualize the data to understand the relation between brightness(magnitude), distance and luminosity.
Astronomers define star brightness in terms of apparent Magnitude, which depends on:
– Luminosity: how bright it is physically.
– Distance: how far away it is from the earth.
Video reference : https://youtu.be/d7A-_5GFEVo
For more class contents, please visit edu.dfrobot.
1 Wide Cardboard Box
1 Cardboard Sheet
1 Straw
1 Bottle Cap
2 Wires
1 Arduino Uno with Extension Shield
1 LED
220Ω Resisitor
In this model, a LED represents an individual "Star", the brightness and position can be varied. On the "Earth" side, there is an ambient light sensor to get the light intensity, and an ultrasonic sensor to detect the distance. The model connects to a microcontroller then visualize the data in Mind+.
Make the Base:
Make the Slider and Fix the Sensors:
Connect sensors and LED to the Arduino. Then connect the arduino to your computer.
When the star's luminosity is fixed, we can study how the brightness of a star changes with distance by gently moving the LED and seeing the data visualize simultaneously in Mind+.
Download and install Mind+, the programming tool we will use.
Download the sample program 1 and open it, switch to offline mode, and Upload the code to your microcontroller(Arduino Uno). In this program, the LED is set to maximum brightness(255), and the sensor data is constantly read and sent to the serial port.
Switch to Online mode, where we can visualize the received data on the stage.
First, connect the device to start receiving upload(offline) mode data.
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