This is a recording of a recent live teleclass I did with thousands of kids from all over the world. I've included it here so you can participate and learn, too
Our solar system includes rocky terrestrial planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars), gas giants (Jupiter and Saturn), ice giants (Uranus and Neptune), and assorted chunks of ice and dust that make up various comets and asteroids.
Did you know you can take an intergalactic star tour without leaving your seat? To get you started on your astronomy adventure, I have a front-row seat for you in a planetarium-style star show. I usually give this presentation at sunset during my live workshops, so I inserted slides along with my talk so you could see the pictures better. This video below is long, so I highly recommend doing this with friends and a big bowl of popcorn. Ready?
[am4show have='p8;p9;p11;p38;p96;' guest_error='Guest error message' user_error='User error message' ] Materials:
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- Two balls, one larger than the other (like a soccer and a tennis ball, or bouncy ball and tennis ball)
- Print out this worksheet to fill in as we go along!
Download the Black Hole Explorer Game. This was created by a team of scientists, you can use this set of instructions to build your own black hole board game. It plays two different ways: competitively and cooperatively. Black Hole Explorer was created for NASA by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
This is a PDF download, so you'll need Adobe Acrobat Reader to view the file. It's fun, easy, and totally free for your family and students to enjoy!
Key Concepts
The solar system is the place that is affected by the gravity our sun. Our solar system includes rocky terrestrial planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars), gas giants (Jupiter and Saturn), ice giants (Uranus and Neptune), and assorted chunks of ice and dust that make up various comets and asteroids. The eight planets follow a near-circular orbit around the sun, and many have moons.
Two planets (Ceres and Pluto) have been reclassified after astronomers found out more information about their neighbors. Ceres is now an asteroid in the Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter. Beyond Neptune, the Kuiper Belt holds the chunks of ice and dust, like comets and asteroids as well as larger objects like dwarf planets Eris and Pluto.
Beyond the Kuiper belt is an area called the Oort Cloud, which holds an estimated 1 trillion comets. The Oort Cloud is so far away that it's only loosely held in orbit by our sun, and constantly being pulled gravitationally by passing stars and the Milky Way itself. The Voyager Spacecraft are beyond the heliosphere (the region influenced gravitationally by our sun) but has not reached the Oort Cloud.
Our solar system belongs to the Milky Way galaxy. Galaxies are stars that are pulled and held together by gravity. Globular clusters are massive groups of stars held together by gravity, using housing between tens of thousands to millions of stars. Some galaxies are sparse while others are packed so dense you can't see through them. Galaxies also like to hang out with other galaxies (called galaxy clusters ), but not all galaxies belong to clusters, and not all stars belong to a galaxy.
After a star uses up all its fuel, it can either fizzle or explode. Planetary nebulae are shells of gas and dust feathering away. Neutron stars are formed from stars that go supernova, but aren't big and fat enough to turn into a black hole. Pulsars are spinning neutron stars with their poles aimed our way. Neutron stars with HUGE magnetic fields are known as magnetars. Black holes are the leftovers of a BIG star explosion. There is nothing to keep it from collapsing, so it continues to collapse forever. It becomes so small and dense that the gravitational pull is so great that light itself can't escape.
The sun holds 99% of the mass of our solar system. The sun's equator takes about 25 days to rotate around once, but the poles take 34 days. You may have heard that the sun is a huge ball of burning gas. But the sun is not on fire, like a candle. You can't blow it out or reignite it. So, where does the energy come from?
The nuclear reactions deep in the core transforms 600 million tons per second of hydrogen into helium. This gives off huge amounts of energy which gradually works its way from the 15 million-degree Celsius temperature core to the 15,000 degree Celsius surface.
Active galaxies have very unusual behavior. There are several different types of active galaxies, including radio galaxies (edge-on view of galaxies emitting jets), quasars (3/4 view of the galaxy emitting jets), blazars (aligned so we're looking straight down into the black hole jet), and others. Our own galaxy, the Milky Way, has a super-massive black hole at its center, which is currently quiet and dormant.
Dying stars blow off shells of heated gas that glow in beautiful patterns. William Hershel (1795) coined the term ‘planetary nebula' because the ones he looked at through 18th century telescopes looked like planets. They actually have nothing to do with planets – they are shells of dust feathering away.
When a star uses up its fuel, the way it dies depends on how massive it was to begin with. Smaller stars simply fizzle out into white dwarfs, while larger stars can go supernova. A recent supernova explosion was SN 1987. The light from Supernova 1987A reached the Earth on February 23, 1987 and was close enough to see with a naked eye from the Southern Hemisphere.
Star Gazing
If you haven't attended a "star aprty", you'll want to search for a local Astronomy Club in your aea so you can participate! They are fun, free, and very informative. In the meantime, here is a series I put together about how to use both telescopes and binoculars to explore the night sky (these were originally done as Facebook Live videos, so when you click the links below, you will be taken directly to my Facebook posts).
- How to Star Gaze with Binoculars (and How to Tell if you have Good Binoculars):
https://www.facebook.com/superchargedsci/videos/495390664387694/ - How to Use Binoculars:
https://www.facebook.com/superchargedsci/videos/949708978706468/ - How to Use a Telescope:
https://www.facebook.com/superchargedsci/videos/445125093005416/ - How to Find Meteorites:
https://www.facebook.com/superchargedsci/videos/829516570812056/
Questions to Ask
- What's your favorite part about Jupiter?
- Which planet is NOW your favorite (after listening to the slide show presentation)?
- What happened to the stars in the last slide of the show?
- How many moons around Jupiter or Saturn can you see with binoculars?
- What's the difference between a galaxy and a black hole?
- How many Earths fit inside the sun?
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Actually, you don’t need to log in. But you do need to install Stellarium on to your computer if you don’t want to use the online version.
in the stellarium video you showed how to use it once your logged in I’m trying to log in but I don’t know how. I can only use the web version and it doesn’t have all the cool features like yours. Could you tell me how to log in?
The goal with space flight is to re-use as much of each rocket as possible. Consider the Saturn V rocket, which was used with the Apollo moon missions. Every part of that rocket was used only once. The first stages fell back to earth and sank to the bottom of the Atlantic ocean. Other parts are left floating out in space. The lunar landers are still sitting on the moon! Most parts of modern rockets, such as the Crew Dragon from SpaceX, are reused. The actual rocket lands back on earth. Even the crew module is reused.
But, since the beginning of space travel, many pieces of rockets and old satellites have been left in orbit around the earth. We call this “space junk”
what is the difference between a astroid, meteorite and a space rock?
I have a very odd rock that’s red with white round dots and its very smooth, it does not leave a streak.
I have another rock that is completely black, sparkly, has layers, and very light for its size but you can’t break it. It leaves a black streak but does not color your hands. I’m not sure what it is I was wondering if you could tell me.
why does dried coral feel sticky?
Could you reuse the parts that fall off the rocket? And were do they go? Do they just float off into space? Are there parts of rockets in space? Will you randomly find a part of a rocket?
The names, originally spelled Phobus and Deimus, respectively, were suggested by Henry Madan (1838–1901), Science Master of Eton, from Book XV of the Iliad, where Ares summons Fear and Fright.
Why are mars’s moons named that?
OMW SAME James! 🙂
astronomy is awesome! i want to become a astronaut chemist when i grow up!!!!!!! (tech wiz at school)
It’s the moon 🙂
Hi there! In the part where you’re showing a year of the sky in the South Pole, what’s that white circle that shows up in May-August?
This was such a great video,I learned so much!!!!!
Sure! First, a star guide or something similar is an astronomer’s best friend! You can read more about that here:
https://www.sciencelearningspace2.com/2014/11/whats-up-in-the-sky-2/
Next, get very comfortable with your telescope – inside, with the lights on! This will help you know exactly how to set it up quickly and accurately on a dark evening.
Finally, I would recommend that you find a local astronomy club. They can provide hands-on help with your specific telescope and are a wealth of information about all things astronomical.
I hope this helps!
Do you have any tips on finding things through a telescope?
Not based on the forms of stars that we current know to exist, no. They are far too hot and landing on one would surely vaporize a spaceship.
However – it’s theoretically possible as it’s hypothesized that stars can burn up all of their hydrogen and helium to the point that they become a black dwarf stellar remnant, emitting no light or heat.
will a star ever cool down and condense enough to land on?
Hi Aurora. I learned that you can see four of Saturn’s moons. But I was wondering which ones?
Hello Mrs. Lipper! Thank you for another awesome video! How do we know what the birth of a star looks like when we have never witnessed one? Also, how do we know that the birth of a star forms every element on the periodic table?
On a side note, have you heard about the NICER and SEXTANT missions that just arrived at Kennedy Space Center? NICER (Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer) is supposed to test the theories of the nature of neutron stars and high-density matter by exploiting the pulsations of pulsars! The SEXTANT (Station Explorer for X-ray Timing And Navigation Technology) program actually uses the pulsars as navigation beacons! It is supposed to be launched to the ISS in February of 2017. They are expecting the initial results by summer of that year. Cool!
Jupiter has lightning storms on it, so why doesn’t it blow up? It is 90% hydrogen, but the remaining 10% is mostly Helium. What’s missing then?
Oxygen. Without it, the hydrogen doesn’t burn. Jupiter has very little oxygen , so the lightning storms on Jupiter don’t ignite the planet or start a fire.
If you could take fire into space and lit Jupiter on fire would it like blow up cause its made up of gasses?
Our sun isn’t big enough to turn in to a black whole if it were to blow up is it?
It’s actually not too close to the sun. They have ones that orbit the earth and continually point toward the sun, also scopes on the earth are pointed toward the sun. You can learn more about it here: http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/
How does NASA get close up pictures of the sun without their spacecraft burning up?
I loved this! It was awesome.
thats cool :()
Between 1,000-5,000 are visible to the naked eye. Some folks can see more stars than others, depending on their eyesight. And if you live near the city, you’ll see less than folks in the country. And if the moon is out, there’s less stars that are visible as well. 🙂
how many stars are in the sky
Here’s the deal: Scientists think that Uranus and Neptune may rain diamonds, which are also piled up several miles thick at the cores of each planet. Here’s how we know this:
Both Uranus and Neptune are almost 4 times the size of Earth. While there’s an outer layer of helium and hydrogen, it also contains methane, which is also called a ‘hydrocarbon’. The atmospheres are very dense had the planets each have a rocky core. The temperatures of these two planets are from 3,000 to 12,000°F, and they also have atmospheric pressures 200,000 to 6,000,000 times the pressure of Earth’s atmosphere. That’s 6 MILLION times the pressure we have here!
A curious team of scientists during the 1980s at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory tested what would happen to methane under intense pressure and temperature. Marvin Ross (the leading scientist) guessed that the methane gas separated into hydrogen and carbon when it reached temperatures above 3,000°F and pressures above 200,000 Earth atmospheres. This means that the carbon atoms were so tightly squeezed together that they would form diamonds! So like any good scientist, his time designed an experiment that used a gas cannon to quickly compress and shock methane gas samples in their laboratory.
Guess what they found? They spotted diamonds the instant before the material evaporated. Several other science teams performed the same experiment with identical results. In other words, possibly ideal conditions for producing diamonds are on Neptune and Uranus. We need to get better and figuring out the exact conditions that exist of each planet before we know for sure.
No way… does it really rain diamonds? How does that happen??