The class has been busy learning all about our solar system. Brady and Matthew found out that light from the sun takes about eight minutes to reach Earth. Charged particles from the sun are carried towards the Earth by the solar winds. Emma researched the beautiful light display in the sky called the Aurora Borealis. Mercury is the planet closest to the sun and Joshua learned that the side facing the sun is very hot, but the other side is extremely cold.
Brendan decided to look at our own home the planet Earth which takes 365 ¼ days to go once around the sun. One day you might like to visit the Barringer meteorite crater in northern Arizona. Nick showed everyone how 50,000 years ago a huge meteorite impacted our planet and exploded with a force equivalent to 2 ½ million tons of TNT. Hawaii and Florida are popular tourist destinations and Kiana described her visit to the Mauna Kea Observatories which are on top of the 4,200 metre summit of a dormant volcano. Ryan is knowledgeable about the Kennedy Space Center in the Cape Canaveral area which was the base for the Apollo missions and the space shuttle program. Nearly 354 km’s above us is the International Space Station and Maya told the class that inside they have to keep it very dry and as a result the astronauts lose about 3 g of skin each day.
One of the biggest planets in our solar system is Jupiter and Aliah and Briana showed us pictures of the Great Red Spot which is a huge storm which could fit four Earth’s inside of it! Eli taught us that the spectacular rings of Saturn are made of ice, dust and rocks. Caitlin informed us that the axis of Uranus is tipped and the planet spins on its side. Ben and Thomas talked to the class about Neptune’s beautiful blue colour which is caused by a large amount of methane gas in the atmosphere.
Alec decided to study the moons of Mars and let us know that Phobos continues to get closer to the planet. Carson and other scientists are very interested in Titan which is like a young Earth. This moon, which orbits Saturn, is one of the only moons in our solar system with an atmosphere. If you want to visit the coldest place in our solar system then you should read Joey’s report about one of Neptune’s moons called Triton.
