1997PASP..109.1264M

We describe the use of an autonomous astronomical camera, called ``Stardial,'' for undergraduate instruction. Stardial delivers images of the night sky nearly in real-time to the world wide web (www.astro.uiuc.edu/ stardial/). The world wide web (WWW) interface is robust, inexpensive, and accommodates many students asynchronously with respect to the instructor(s). The guiding philosophy is to provide students with authentic astronomical data so that they may learn about science by doing it themselves. Students respond favorably to the opportunity to learn from their own experiences with authentic data, complete with its irregularities and its surprises. Stardial has been operational for one academic year (1996-97) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In this paper we describe Stardial's instrumentation, some of the curriculum based upon Stardial's unique data, and the experiences of students who have used Stardial. We conclude with possible research topics using Stardial data and with a brief look to the future of remote laboratories.