 Another reason you won't see images like these in the telescope is that some of these use representational color, using color to represent light that would otherwise be invisible to our eyes, like x-ray and infrared. This card sorting game introduces that concept. You might want to use rusty in the USA cards to introduce the game. Scientists learn a lot from the light we see coming to us from the rest of the universe, but there is more to light than just visible light. There is more energetic light, ultraviolet, x-ray, gamma ray and less energetic light, infrared and radio that our eyes cannot detect. We need other kinds of detectors and a different way to picture what is emitting that light. To get a complete picture and understanding of something, we need to look at it in a variety of ways. This is Rusty. Can you tell by looking at Rusty which parts are warm, which cold? No. Does Rusty ever actually look like this? I hope not. This is an infrared photo that shows us the temperature of Rusty. Which parts of Rusty are the warmest? His eyes and mouth. Which coolest? His fur and definitely his nose. What color is being used to represent the warmest parts? Yellow and white. Could we have used other colors to represent the different temperatures? Sure. Right. Any color at all. We're using representational color. We're taking energy we can't see and converting it into something our eyes can interpret. Different colors representing different temperatures. What part of Earth are these images of? United States. If you were orbiting the Earth in a spacecraft, which of these images would be most like what you'd see from there? The satellite image. What can we tell from this? Can we see where the mountains are? Yes. How about the forest, the desert? Yes. What do these other images show us about this area of the Earth? This one seems to show the temperatures. Looking from out in space, by just using our eyes, would we be able to tell where it is warm or cold? No. This map is used to show the temperature of the air in various parts of the country. Is the air or the land really that color? No. Right. It is using different colors to represent different temperatures. Natural radioactivity is common in the rocks and soil that make up our planet. There is nowhere on Earth that you cannot find natural radioactivity. Radioactive rocks naturally emit gamma rays in very low doses. If you look at a rock, can you tell if it is radioactive? No. Here is a map of the natural emission of gamma rays. Where are gamma rays the weakest? In the purple. How do you know it's weakest there? From the key. Sure. It is using different colors to represent different intensities of gamma ray radiation, and the key tells us what those colors mean. You've used a cell phone? Of course. A cell phone is a radio receiver. How do you know where the signal is strong? Can you look around you and see the radio waves coming at you? No. What do you need to do? Look at the bar codes. Right. Look at the bar lines on the phone. So this map shows where cell phone coverage is stronger and weaker. Would it be okay to use blue instead of green for the strong signal? Sure. All these images are using representational color, taking energy we cannot detect, and with just our eyes and converting it into something our eyes can interpret. Different colors representing different information about the USA. The same is true for some of the great astronomy pictures you see. The colors are beautiful, but more often they are representational color, telling a much richer story to the astronomer who created it. The colors may represent what the object is made of, or signal strength. I think we're ready to play the universe in a different light. Like the maps of the USA shown in different energies, these are images of various types of objects you might see in the telescopes tonight, like planets and star clusters, each in different energies of light. How about galaxies? And other galaxies, yes. Here is an example. When we look at a galaxy in a telescope, our eyes see the light from the billions of stars in that galaxy. An X-ray telescope would reveal the black hole in the middle of that galaxy. What does infrared show us? It says warm dust. Yes, the raw material for new stars. Using color to represent where the signal is strong or weak, these different types of energy tell us different information about the various objects we see in the sky. Each card tells you on the back whether it is visible light energy or another kind of light energy and what that energy is revealing about the object. The visible light image tells you what the object is. You see, you need to match those up with the object as it would appear in other light energies. There are nine objects represented and three different images for each object. Which ones go together? Sort them into groups that represent the same object. Okay, that one matches. Here are the answers. How well did we do? What do these images tell us about the objects that our eyes alone can't detect? What did you find out about Jupiter? Visible. This is why NASA needs so many different kinds of telescopes to reveal what's going on in the universe. When playing the game, if you have a large group of people, you might want to give each person an image. Let them try to find their matching buddies and group themselves. If you have a young or beginners group, you may want to use only five or six objects instead of all nine. You'll note that some of the playing cards have a slight grey border. These are suggested beginners groups of playing cards. Use the poster for more examples and more information on NASA missions and telescopes making these images. Now let's go out to the telescopes and experience what we can see in the universe.