The Newsletter on Astronomy Education for K-12, College, and even Home Schooling science teachers.
The Classroom Astronomer Newsletter (TCA, or TCAN) is an monthly-or-moreemail newsletter, or as we prefer to call it, an Inbox Magazine, on Substack that covers many of the same topics as the 2009-2015 magazine, and debuted in May 2021.
Designed for use for all levels of astronomy educators, including the pandemically virtual home teachers and home schoolers, and anyone who wants more than just a “Wow, what’s up in the sky?” news briefing. Many items come from the most recent astronomy and astronomy education world conferences! Written by longtime astronomer, journalist and educator Dr. Larry Krumenaker.
The first version of TCA, with regular columns on Teachniques, Resources, Reports from conferences and useful scholarly journal reports ran twice a month from 2021 to 2023.
The second, new version of TCA, begun in part in December 2025 and fully in January 2026, will be a minimum once a month issue, with some of the same material but it is geared towards an Exploration of the Universe with Big Data study for all who want to find out more about stellar and non-stellar objects, stars, exoplanets, etc. using the massive datasets such as Gaia’s millions of stars, Kepler K2 mission’s exoplanets data, and about a dozen more datasets. The Exploration will be mostly on a PAID tier and will co-operate with the same Exploration on The Galactic Times Inbox Magazine. For more details on that Exploration project, see the Exploration option in the menu on top of this page.
The paid tier is at an introductory level through December 2025, rising to its normal $40 annual/$7.50 monthly fee level in January when the Exploration begins. Paid subscribers will have access to the Exploration also of Substack’s newest features–video posts, podcasts, live streaming, and eventually live sessions exploring the Data Universe.
Meanwhile…..
Here is a sample of a Full Issue!: Issue 13
Here is a special FREE issue, TCA 25, on how to measure the Moon’s size and distance using the passage of the Moon through the Earth’s shadow on May 15-16, 2022, and a tennis ball (or other small sphere)!
On this website you’ll find an index to topics discussed, and you can find the issues’ Tables of Contents. From Issue 9, the Archive on Substack is available only to Full Issue subscribers.
