Astronomy: The night sky

As we are moving along in our study of Astronomy, we are entering the study of the stars. We learned today that Polaris is our North Star and is located at the end tip of the Little Dipper- I'm sure you all knew that. I always feel like I am learning new things- I sort of remember that form somewher. I remember reading about how to find the north star if you find "The drinking Gourd" or the Big Dipper from our studies about slavery, but after that it's all fuzzy.
Anyway...The North star is not in the Big Dipper. You have to follow the line from the Big Dipper to the Little Dipper in order to find it. So first look for the Big Dipper and then draw a line to the end star of the Little Dipper and voila! you have found the North Star.





Also,a fact my daughter wanted me to record was that Uranus rains diamonds- a fact worth remembering ;)

Neat tricks

School starts tomorrow...yea. We've missed it. I've missed blogging about our adventures, reading, watching the birds eat their suet from out our school window, and also watching the squirrels leap from the telephone line onto the cedar tree about 10 yards away- the funniest thing. and, oh...so many things. So here I am planning our week, but I couldn't resist sharing this this fun video on "sciency" things.

Astronomy Volcano Experiment

We learned yesterday that Mars is home to the largest Volcano in the Galaxy. The name of this volcano is Olympus Mons. Laura made a volcano out of a simple Salt dough recipe and after it dried, painted it and then put in all those fun ingredients to make it erupt, over, and over, and over.....

Earth for sale! Free Samples

Earth for Sale: Free samples
By Laura Thevaos
Exploring God's Creation with Astronomy Assignment
(I'm still learning to spell... okay, so I'm not a great speller...)

Madam How and Lady Why links

In our study of natural science, we are studying about Volcano's. It is fascinating that such a simple structure could be the cause of so much destruction- Amazing! But we also learned that Volcano's can also improve the habitats of native plants and animals as seen in Italy where the ground is incredibly fertile due to the volcanic ash left in the soil.

Speaking of Italy, here is a link to a video about the sad tale of the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius Watch here:http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/pompeii/pliny/video.html

This is a neat link as well: http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/player/kids/forces-of-nature-kids/volcanoes-101-kids.html

Happy Volcano learning!

Mark your Calandar!

We love, love, love Astronomy using the Exploring Creation With... series. We just finished a Chapter about the sun ending it with some "extras" like looking up when we will next get to experience an eclipse. I found the date for the next nearest date for us (W. US) to experience an Annular Eclipse.

May 20th, 2012!

And if you happen to be in the S. Pacific or in Australia for whatever reason in November of the same year, you may be able to see a total eclipse. Or you may want to think about a family vacation in n Atlantic, Faeroe Is, or Svalbard to be able to see the next total eclipse three years after that- to the date.

If you are scratching your head over the meaning of Annular or Total, that's okay. I'll see if these definitions will help:

Partial - Moon's penumbral shadow traverses Earth (umbral and antumbral shadows completely miss Earth)
Annular - Moon's antumbral shadow traverses Earth (Moon is too far from Earth to completely cover the Sun)
Total - Moon's umbral shadow traverses Earth (Moon is close enough to Earth to completely cover the Sun)
Hybrid - Moon's umbral and antumbral shadows traverse Earth (eclipse appears annular and total along different sections of its path). Hybrid eclipses are also known as annular-total eclipses.


Still don't get it? Maybe this picture would make it a bit clearer:

Annular Eclipse:


Partial Eclipse:


Total Eclipse:


Hybrid Eclipse:



Very Cool!