National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Connect to Student Hera

Hera is an interface to software and data provided by the High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center at NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center. The data are from satellites which detect x-rays and gamma rays from objects such as black holes, neutron stars, galaxies, and supernovae.

This interface has been adapted for use by students, educators, amateur astronomers and the general public, and allows them to use the same software that astronomers use on the same data sets that astronomers analyze. These data may be used for extensions of classroom lessons, science fair projects, research projects, etc.

Student Hera guides students through a self-assessed series of activities, starting with practice interpreting light curves for binary systems. Students then install Hera access data from the Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer satellite (RXTE). Students analyze the data and compare their results with results in the professional literature. A file of the assessment results can be electronically saved and submitted to the professor.

There are different ways to start up a Student Hera session. But first, tare two basic requirements to run Student Hera:

• A direct broadband Internet connection, and
• Any firewall, if present, must be configured to allow communication with Hera servers.

For fv running on the Microsoft Windows and Apple Mac OS X, as of fv release 5.1, the installation procedure will produce 3 icons for users, fv, Hera and Student Hera. To start up any of these operation, just double click on the icon.

For fv running on the regular UNIX machine (like Linux), user can start up Student Hera by typing this command on the command line prompt:

fv -student

Regular Hera can also be started on the command line via this command:

fv -hera

After brief moment, a login panel will start. If you have an estiablished account, typing your user ID and password to start use regular Hera. For Student Hera, only the user ID is needed. If you already have try Student Hera before, the last user ID used will be populated for you on the login panel. Or if you prefer, click on "New" to create a brand new ID.

For more information on Student Hera, visit the Student Hera web site at

http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/teachers/hera/what.html

Go to Hera Connection Help.

Go to About fv.