Look Up and See

                    This project is being developed as a tool to help teach high  school  students the location of stars,
                               how they are mapped, and the progression of the zodiac through the night sky of the northern 
                               hemisphere.                        
                  
                  The first task was to get coordinates of the stars of each sign of the zodiac.   At first I measured
                              stars individually by hand from a  star  map.   That didn’t last long.  I found coordinates on the web
                              and put them in Excel. 

                   These coordinates were in hours, minutes and seconds (as from a sphere), and my original map was
                              flat, so they needed to be converted to degrees.  This was done and the map generated.

                  The map was transferred back to a sphere, and a series of images generated from rotation every
                            15 degrees.  These were put in  Photoshop and animated, resulting in a globe that turns and shows
                             the constellations of the zodiac.

 
                   Next I wanted to “connect the dots” to show the individual constellations, and have them appear
                            one at a time on a map, to show  the order is not alphabetical but seasonal.

               
                  I also want to alter the viewpoint of the sphere so that you are seeing the sky from the inside, much
                            like looking up into the heavens.   An example of the stars rotating around the North Pole is
                            found at this link.  I envision something of this type.

 
                   Finally, I want to turn this into a series of lessons  that could be used for teaching purposes.