Use it quickly
Can I use this in a lesson?
Yes. Start with a guided viewer or activity page, then use the prompts below for discussion, worksheet questions, or small-group investigation.
Teach with real astronomical data
Help students investigate the universe through data they can see.
Found in Space gives you interactive visualisations, guided questions, and open investigations for teaching astronomy, data, uncertainty, coding, and critical thinking. Most activities need no coding; every one can become a deeper project.
Choose a level
What age or stage is it for?
Activities work best from secondary school upward. Each activity lists the suggested level, timing, astronomy idea, and data idea so you can pick the right depth.
Extend it
Do students need coding?
No for the visual activities. Optional extensions use starter data guides, notebooks, the open pipeline, or student-made visualisations when you want a project layer.
Ready-to-use activities
Start with a guided visualisation.
Each activity pairs an astronomy idea with a data idea. That pairing is the heart of Found in Space: students learn what the universe is doing and how the evidence is built.
The Hertzsprung-Russell diagram
Use a real stellar sample to connect colour, temperature, luminosity, stellar evolution, and observational bias.
Constellations and 3D space
Start from Orion, then move through the local star field to show how perspective turns 3D space into sky patterns.
Parallax
Move the observer and watch nearby stars slide more than distant ones, making distance measurement visible.
Star clusters
Compare real stellar families and ask why clusters are useful natural laboratories for understanding stars.
The radio bubble
Use the scale of radio signals leaving Earth to discuss distance, detectability, and the size of the local neighbourhood.
Investigations
Ask questions students can investigate, not just answer.
Real data carries uncertainty, selection effects, coordinate choices, and measurement limits. That is exactly why it is useful in a classroom: students can test whether a pattern comes from the stars, the sample, or the way the data is shown.
Good starting questions
- Do the brightest stars have to be the closest?
- Why do Orion and the Pleiades look elongated in some 3D views?
- What changes when students move from apparent brightness to true luminosity?
- Which features in a star map are physical, and which come from measurement limits?
Create or adapt
Move from using the visuals to building with the data.
Students can begin with a small bright-star data guide, make a chart or simple 3D scene, then move toward the full open pipeline if they want to understand how Gaia and Hipparcos become a browser-ready star map.