RL and JW

Mercury is a rocky planet that has a solid surface and is very hot. Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun and is the smallest in the Solar System. It is only about one-third the size of Earth. The surface temperature of the side of Mercury closest to the Sun reaches 427 degrees Celsius, a temperature hot enough to melt tin. On the side facing away from the Sun, or the night side, the temperature drops to -183 degrees Celsius.

January 21, 2009

LM

How heavy is the Sun?

Although we can not actually weigh the Sun with a scale we can compute its weight by studying how it affects other objects like the Earth. We do know that it contains all the mass in our Solar System. Since the Sun is so much more massive than the Earth, over 300 000 times heavier, its gravitational pull is also much larger. A child that weighs 75 pounds on Earth would weigh a ton on the Sun.

Planet Earth

LB

January 20, 2009

JJ

January 19, 2009

AT

At the computer lab I viewed lots of planets and the Sun. Did you know the sun is so big it can hold one million Earths? The sun is very hot. At the core it is 15 million degrees Celsius or 27 million degrees Farenheit.

LW

The Sun is a star at the center of our Solar system. Sol means sun. Some bodies that orbit the sun are planets, asteroids, meteoroids, comets and dust. Meteors are just bits of dust or rocks from space that get pulled toward Earth because of gravity.

January 15, 2009

AW

Did you know that Mars has higher mountains and deeper canyons than any other planet? The largest canyon on Mars would stretch the same distance as from Vancouver, British Columbia to about New Brunswick on the east coast of Canada. It also has the Solar System's biggest volcano.

JN

January 14, 2009

We can play games at home on this site: kidsastronomy

LM

The Milky Way galaxy is actually just one of billions of galaxies contained in the Universe.

Our sun is very small in one area of the Milky Way.

Our Novel, The Tale of Despereaux

RB and JJ

This is Despereaux when he was first born. He was born with eyes open and he loved anything that was light. He also loved music and decided it was like honey.

SM

What is a shooting star?

The amazing streaks of light that you sometimes see in the sky are not stars but are caused by tiny pieces of dust and rock called meteoroids falling into the Earth's atmosphere and burning up.

January 13, 2009

Novel Time

RB and ML

We're reading a novel in class and we enjoy it so much! In The Tale of Despereaux a mouse meets a princess named Pricess Pea. They love each other. He's braver than all other mice. He has a needle and he pretends it's a sword. Other mice think that he is not a normal mouse and they send him to the dungeon.

Science

RL

Wow, our class is learning a lot about stars, planets, the Earth and its atmosphere. Today we were in the computer lab at Ten-Broeck Elementary getting ready to publish pictures and information on our class blog. I went into the Milky Way on Google and searched for an amazing picture. Did you know the Milky Way is the name of our galaxy? A galaxy is a group of billions of stars.

AW

See this site to see the solar system.

http://www.kidsastronomy.com/solar_system.htm

The Sun is the center of the solar system. Planets orbit around the Sun.

JW

What are planets?

How big is the Earth?

RH

The Earth is the biggest of all the terrestrial planets. A terrestrial planet is a dense planet found in the inner Solar System.

Why can't I see the Big Dipper during the day?

KB

One day I went to my cousin's party. When I came home, I saw the Big Dipper outside. It was outside. It was above me. The stars sparkled. It was fine and pretty too. Then I went inside for dinner. The next morning when the sun came up I ate my breakfast and went outside. When I looked I couldn't see the Big Dipper. Why can't I see the Big Dipper in the day time?

Stars do glow (send light) during the day but we can't see them because of the glare of sunlight. When the sun is up, the blue color in sunlight gets scattered all over the atmosphere turning the sky the familiar blue colour. This blue light is much brighter than the faint light coming from the stars, so it prevents us from seeing them. If you were standing on the Moon, for instance, where there is no atmosphere, you would see the stars both during the day and night.

January 12, 2009

The Milky Way is our own galaxy. This shows more than 200 billion stars, planets, dust, gas and more objects. Our own sun and solar system are part of this galaxy.

January 12, 2009

Planet Earth and its Moon

Students are excitedly asking questions about space. Look at Celestia, a free space simulation that shows the Earth as a three dimensional planet.   www.shatters.net/celestia/index.html

Earth's Moon

Events

Some Interesting Information

In History

2. The first closeup photos of the moon were taken by the United States on July 28, 1964.

3. On January 9, 1968 Surveyor 7 space probe soft lands on the Moon. 

4. The first lunar landing was made on July 16, 1969 by U.S.A.'s Armstrong, Collins and

Aldrin. (Apollo 11) Neil Armstrong was the first man to set foot on the surface of the moon. He said, "That's one small step for a man; one giant leap for mankind."