Scioly.org

I believe that's one way of putting it.

syo_astro and I just took SE Regionals, despite being woefully unprepared because neither of us were actually doing the event this year (syo would like to correct me to say that he's only "semi-unprepared").

72/80, not bad at all XD

We'll be trying PA States next...

Edit: 62/100 on States. Probably could've gotten a few (2-3) more if it hadn't been for some reading fails, but I don't think we would've beaten the high score.

A competitor PM'd me and some others about what the topic was for next year.

I am not sure whether I can confirm or deny anything quite yet since the nationals rules meeting is directly after nats (so has not happened yet). I believe I have previously stated this on the forums, so if you check the webinars that Donna put up (on the event supervisors one), then you would see it is likely to be young-stars/exoplanets again. But if you enjoy astronomy, just study all the topics!

This was my last year in Science Olympiad, and I enjoyed my last Astronomy test at nationals this past weekend. Im looking forward to continuing to support science olympiad as a graduate now A special thanks to all supervisors and other graduates out there who have helped to keep science olympiad strong.

Techsam wrote:This was my last year in Science Olympiad, and I enjoyed my last Astronomy test at nationals this past weekend. Im looking forward to continuing to support science olympiad as a graduate now A special thanks to all supervisors and other graduates out there who have helped to keep science olympiad strong.

Don't know if Tad/others will be posting a response, but I appreciate it (I am sure they do too). After my year of supporting scioly as I could, at least it keeps some of that fuzzy feeling inside hehe.

The National exam is posted on the AAVSO website: http://www.aavso.org/science-olympiad-2015.

tad_k_22 wrote:The National exam is posted on the AAVSO website: http://www.aavso.org/science-olympiad-2015.

Thanks for posting and contributing to such an awesome test, Tad!

I just heard that there is a contest to give names to discovered exoplanets! I thought it would really cool to have Science Olympiad, or just the Scioly organization, to suggest "Scioly" as a name for one of the 20 listed exoplanets. I checked the list and they have Fomalhaut b listed which happened to be one of the DSO's for this years competition!

Here is the list of exoplanets: http://www.nameexoworlds.org/the_exoworlds

Here is where you can register an organization to suggest a name: http://www.nameexoworlds.org/

Hey guys, I'm new to Astronomy this year. Are there any books you would suggest I should read? Most of the ones that did Astronomy in previous just downloaded like 50 gigs worth of wikipedia pages Thanks.

K-Meister wrote:Hey guys, I'm new to Astronomy this year. Are there any books you would suggest I should read? Most of the ones that did Astronomy in previous just downloaded like 50 gigs worth of wikipedia pages Thanks.

One thing you should not do is purely read Wikipedia. It is good for getting a basic overview, but it will not truly help you learn and engage into the event. The DSOs assure that won't happen if you're up against a good test writer. Books for next year depend on the topic. There are some good books on exoplanets, early stellar evo, but I don't know if they're worth getting (they'd probably be far too high-level for the event). There is always the classic rec of Carroll and Ostlie (Intro to Modern Astrophys), but the sections on planet stuff honestly relate more to solar systems (there's some decent overview on young stellar evo, though). I feel like the exoplanets/young stellar evo topic lends itself more towards lecture notes and other sources online that work quite well, even if you don't like to sit there trawling through the web . I highly recommend doing that, though. The other issue with "downloading wiki" is that then you get dependent on notes...rather than just knowing it, which can sometimes super mess you up. Of course, if it is galaxies as Chalker keeps asserting (which I've tried to show isn't necessarily true...but I enjoy confusion before official rules release), then the books would definitely be different. Hope that helped!