Churchill Science

Want to explore Mars? You don’t need to build a multimillion dollar satellite or send a rover. Instead all you need is a web browser and Google Mars:

Click on the image to try!

Also, if you have the latest version of Google Earth on your computer, you can access Google Mars in 3D! Highly recommended!

Here are some of the planets that Cluster B created using Planet 10. To make your own planets, click on these photos!

Ruby’s Astro Planet

Chloe’s Planet

Ruby and Chloe – what happened to your planets? Did they succeed?

Click here to try building your own star! You can decide how big to make it and how many metals to put in. Watch and see how long it takes to live and die. Also, can you make it form a black hole?

By popular request…

In this game, you get to be the Sun. You can “fire” small, medium, or large solar winds at the Earth and watch as the Earth’s magnetic field produces an aurora in response. Then click “Evaluate” to find out what your solar winds did to the Earth.

The above videos show how the Earth’s magnetic field protects it from the Sun’s energy.

Here’s what it looks like when solar wind hits the Earth’s magnetic field. It causes the Northern and Southern Lights (Auroras).

This video starts with Pluto, a dwarf planet, and then moves up in size order. Can you see why everything in the solar system orbits the Sun and not Earth or another planet?

Also, look at the size of the Sun compared to other stars. What would happen if our planet orbited a bigger star? We are going to be talking more about stars and why bigger is NOT better!

What does our Sun look like today? Click here to take a look!
Some of the images you’ll see were taken with special cameras. There are some kinds of light that our eyes can’t see, like UV rays (the kind that give you sunburn) so we use these cameras to take pictures of the Sun, sort of like an X-ray machine takes pictures of your bones.

Click here to learn more facts about the Sun. From National Geographic’s great website about the solar system!

Just the animation:

The Kepler spacecraft was launched into space last night. Its job is to take pictures of planets that orbit around other stars.

Here’s an animation:

And here’s the video of Kepler’s launch.

This first video is called Origins of the Moon. Don’t worry about the big words and the advanced math – this is just showing the same idea as the video from the Museum of Natural History. When Earth was first born, it had no Moon. Then, another planet too close by hit the Earth. The Moon was formed from that explosion. There was nothing living on Earth at the time. We’ve also talked a lot in class about how this could not happen again today because there are no planets that come very close to us.

Why does the Moon look like it changes? This shows some nice footage of the Earth, Moon and Sun together. It makes it easy to see how the Sun’s light makes one side of the Moon look bright. But, sometimes the bright side is facing away from us or only facing towards us a little bit. So, the Moon sometimes looks dark or has a crescent shape.

The objects in our solar system are remarkably different sizes. Click on the picture to find out more!

We are starting to explore the solar system, and this is the first tool we’re using. It’s free software called Celestia. Click on the picture to learn more about it! We’ll be posting screenshots of what we find!

Some of the things 219 noticed this morning:
-The Sun has spots!
-Jupiter and Saturn have many moons.
-There are many satellites orbiting Earth.