8 Wonders of the Solar System

I stumbled upon a new site called "8 Wonders of the Solar System". It has breath-taking artwork from artist Ron Miller. and is structured to read like a tour guide if you were to visit these places. Some of the stops on this virtual field trip: the rings of Saturn, Jupiter's Red Spot, Valles Marineris - Mars, Geysers of Enceladus, Geysers of Triton, and a few more for you to discover!

Astronomy Sites

Wiki Sky is a site that shows outer space with incredibly beautiful photographs. Zoom in and out of constellations, nebulas, galaxies, and more. While I don't think this is as useful or detailed as Google Sky, it is another good tool for teachers and students to use as reference.

Also, hop on over to The Tech Museum's Satellite Builder sponsored by Lockheed Martin. The site answers questions such as, "What is a satellite and what do they do?" Furthermore, there is an interactive section where you can build your own satellite or learn about the anatomy of a satellite.

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Astronomy Sites for Classroom Use

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Welcome Google Sky!

Astronomy Sites for Classroom Use

If you read this blog at all, you know my fascination with astronomy websites. I love space. I wanted to be an astronaut until the Challenger disaster in 1985. Now I use the web to get my fix on astronomy. Here are some more good ones:

Human Space Flight by NASA

Human Space Flight is a website where you can enter your city to see which space objects will fly by your night sky for you to see. It gives you the time of the object and how long it will take to pass over your location. Look up satellites or space shuttles!

Astronomy Picture of the Day
I did not post an example picture of Astronomy Picture of the Day because the NASA photographer does not give rights to copy his pictures without written permission, but these photographs are amazing and would lend themselves to good teaching points in the classroom.

The Exploratorium’s Observatory

The Observatory has great resources for Venus, Saturn, Mars, Mercury, sunspots and auroras. The interactive format allows you to click on different parts of the image to see more information. In addition, there are many more interactive sections of the site such as: Your Weight on Other Worlds and Your Age on Other Worlds.

The Solar System Visualizer

At first the Solar System Visualizer looks to be a very primitive site. There is an image of our solar system with the planets orbiting the sun. Okay… now what? The magic comes in by clicking on one of the planets - try Saturn or Uranus for example. You will see the planet in the middle of the screen with its moons orbiting in animation. BUT then you need to ZOOM OUT. Did you know there were so many bodies orbiting our planets? It was amazing. Check it out.

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Visit Mars with Google Mars

While Google Mars is not as exciting as Google Earth, it is still worth a visit. You can tour the planet by elevation, infrared, or visible surface. Zoom in or out of the planet and search by plains, ridges, craters, mountains, canyons, dunes, spacecraft landings, etc. Once you search for a specific place, often Google Mars will link to an article that you can read for more information.

On the “About Google Mars” page, Google provides this introduction, “This map of Mars, published by Percival Lowell in 1895, was the result of many years spent carefully studying the Red Planet through his telescope. Now you can do the same through your web browser. In collaboration with NASA researchers at Arizona State University, we’ve created some of the most detailed scientific maps of Mars ever made.”

I enjoyed it! Imagine being able to explore Mars from the comfort of your classroom. Take a virtual field trip today!

Visit Planet Science! So Cool!

Planet Science is a site from the UK, which sometimes causes educators in the USA to pass it by. I don’t know why - many of the interactive, educational sites worth visiting come from the UK. Ok, so they spell things a little differently and use the metric system (like everywhere else but here)! Their sites still rock!

Planet Science has interactive games for K-12 students. I played a few of them and have enjoyed ALL of them so far. The first one I tried was the Smoothie maker. You can choose the ingredients to add to a blender to make your own smoothie. When you’re done, start the blender! The site will tell you how nutritious your smoothie is complete with how many grams of sugar and how many carbs you just drank in your smoothie. The best part is the “Smoothie” song the site plays as it mixes your drink. So much fun!

Next I tried Planet 10: World Builder (because Earth can’t last forever). The student creates a new planet by choosing many, many different things such as: size, orbit, atmosphere, shape, moons, terrain, organisms, distance from sun, etc. After you make all of your choices, you launch your planet into the atmosphere and see if it “survives” in space. After a lot of careful planning, I managed to burn up all the living organisms, evaporated my atmosphere, and got hit by a comet. Disaster. But so much fun!

Planet 10: Solar System is also a nice resource. Students can zoom into different planets to learn more about them. Fun! It has better graphics than Google Sky, but I’m not sure if the information is as detailed as Google Sky.

The site also has a list of science games on the Internet that are worth looking into as well as a parent page to get them involved. I love this site! Thumbs up from me!

Earth Guide

Okay, Okay, I know I have a lot of blogs about science and astronomy. I think it’s because science lends itself so well to be illustrated with technology. The Japan Science and Technology Agency has a website called “Earth Guide” that has detailed, interactive pictures that cover such topics as, “Where is the earth located in the Milky Way Galaxy?”, “How different is the earth from the other planets?”, and “How big are the earth’s oceans?” Even though the site has advanced vocabulary, teachers can still make use of this site for the pictures alone. Once the picture is projected, the teacher can explain in easier language to communicate the objective. Visual connections are very powerful when teaching about space, when everything is on a such a large scale that most students may not be able to comprehend. Older students will most likely be able to use this site for an independent assignment, and younger kids will benefit from the visual appeal.

Thumbs up for the website!

Welcome Google Sky!

The makers of Google Earth have unleashed their latest creation: Google Sky, which is available within the newest version of Google Earth. Basically, it is just like Google Earth, but the camera is pointed to the sky. Head over to their website to see the latest features. Google Sky allows you to see planets, starts, the moon, constellations, galaxies, and the atmosphere. Using this program with an interactive whiteboard will allow students to interact with the program for a hands-on activity. Google Earth continues to add features that make it a powerful teaching tool to help students visualize the enormous size of our planet and space. Check it out!

Astronomy Websites for Classroom Use

In Frederick County Public Schools, students are introduced to the Solar System in second grade. Since many kids can’t understand the concept of city and state versus planet and solar system, how does a teacher explain the enormity of the content they have to teach? There are many space-related websites that can help the kids see what they can’t with the naked eye. For example, check out the “Earth and Moon Viewer”. This site shows pictures of the earth from space from the point of view of the moon or the sun. There are also selections for “day and night” view so you can compare how the earth looks during both periods. A sister site of the “Earth and Moon Viewer” is the “Pick a Satellite” website. Just as the name suggests, you click on one of the many satellites in space to see a current view of the earth. If you don’t find what you want with the first one, try another.

The pictures you find on both of these sites work great with Smart Boards. By projecting an image of the earth from space, have the students come to the Smart Board and label the different oceans, continents, countries, major cities, regions, and weather patterns. I have tried this numerous times in my classroom and have covered all of these topics easily with just one picture, and the kids are actively engaged to come to the board and label the picture. I make it similar to an “I Spy” book, and the kids have fun as they learn from real world pictures of the earth. The Smart Board can also be used with the site called Sky Map, which allows you to see which stars and constellations that are above you. By projecting the night sky, students can use the marker on the Smart Board to label constellations and identify major stars.

The website “All Known Bodies in the Solar System are Larger Than 200 Miles in Diameter” is a simple site with a major impact. All the bodies in our solar system are shown lined up from biggest to smallest so that you can compare sizes. This is a wonderful visual aid for teaching relative size.

The “Cassini Imaging” website shows flybys of various planets from different space probes. The mini movies can be played directly in the brower or downloaded to be played later. The 5-10 second clips show amazing views of Jupiter, Saturn, the moon and the earth. It’s a wonderful way to take your students up-close and personal into the Solar System.

Also, the “virtual reality moon phases” website allows users to enter any date (month, day, year, time) into the website and it will return with a picture of the moon phase for that day. Even though the website is not visually appealing with the green font against the black background, the content on this site is priceless. There is a great corresponding lesson that goes along with this website called “Birthday Moons“. The lesson comes complete with a sheet for the children to complete as they work through the activity. Basically, the kids enter their birthday into the moon phase finder, and record the moon phase for that day on their sheet. From there, the kids enter every third day into the moon finder until they complete a month long cycle from their birthday. Each moon phase is recorded as they go. While this is a very motivating lesson to do with kids, you may want to prepare kids ahead of time just in case their birthday moon is a “new moon” since nothing will be there. If you are creative with this ahead of time, you’ll avoid tears of disappointment! You’ll find using these sites in class will make teaching the content easier!