The impact of teaching computational astronomy on the development of students' computer skills

Some blended methods of teaching-learning were successfully used in teaching the astronomy and astrometry of asteroids to students in Computer Sciences at the University of Craiova, using real astronomical data about celestial objects from our Solar System, obtained from the Astronomical Observatory Isaac Newton (La Palma, Spain). The students were asked to develop some small scripts in order to facilitate the detection and the analysis of data for new discovered asteroids, a request that improved their capacities to understand and apply various modern concepts of Computer Graphics, Data Base and Web design. This approach to learning brings new challenges for the students, new opportunities for the process of professional training in Computer Sciences and provided good result in very short term, the students acquiring very fast the necessary skills to approach both the professional level of Web programming and the modern research area of Computational Astronomy