Space Atlas reached two educator resources: NCASE and Share My Lesson
Space Atlas now appears in the NCASE Programs directory as a free astronomy learning resource by independent developer Jihun Oh. I also contributed a Moon-phases activity for Grades 4–8 to Share My Lesson. These are two different public records. NCASE points educators towards the software; the Share My Lesson page hosts a lesson I prepared to use it.
From a simulator to a classroom investigation
When I built the Moon Phase Simulator, I needed learners to see both the side of the Moon illuminated by the Sun and the portion that appears bright from Earth. Moving the Moon between New, First Quarter, Full and Last Quarter lets someone test whether those two views agree.
A working simulator, however, does not tell a teacher what to ask first. I turned those controls into Moon Phases: Predict, Test, Explain, a 20–25 minute sequence: predict the appearance, test four positions, then explain the observation. The Share My Lesson resource describes a two-page worksheet with a student investigation table, a suggested teacher sequence and answer guidance. The page names Jihun Oh as the original creator. Its downloadable file is dated October 19, 2026.
What the NCASE listing establishes
The NCASE public Programs page describes Space Atlas’s free Moon-phases, Earth-seasons and astronomical-scale models and links to the current spaceatlasedu.org site. I verified the entry on November 11, 2026. Its original listing date is not established.
For an educator who has not seen the project before, the entry provides a way to reach the working model and inspect its explanations. The Share My Lesson resource answers a related question: what might a teacher do with that model during a short lesson? As a developer, I had to make the model’s viewpoint clear enough that the written prompts and the controls described the same geometry.
Check the original work
- NCASE Programs for the directory entry and its live link
- Share My Lesson for the author credit, worksheet description and download terms
- Interactive Moon Phase Simulator for the working software
- Earlier Space Atlas engineering notes for the original model
The CC BY-NC-ND license shown on Share My Lesson applies to that worksheet PDF. I have not reproduced the PDF or the platform’s preview images here. The simulator uses simplified geometry rather than an ephemeris, and the site uses GA4 and Google AdSense. A teacher considering it for school should review learner privacy, accessibility and device requirements.
The verified outcomes are a public directory entry and a creator-contributed lesson resource. Neither record establishes classroom uptake or measured learning gains. My Space Atlas development portfolio describes the wider implementation work.