Hubble’s Next Discovery

Thurgood Marshall

Elementary School

May 1, 2009

Our group consists of 2 teams of “astronauts” taking part in Launching A Dream. This program is a year-long program that Dr. Stephanie Wright started 17 years ago in Delaware

• The 4th and 5th graders competed and 26 were chosen to represent team Moonwalkers and Marshall S.T.A.R.S.

We have a computer lab where we all met and voted on our Hubble choice. We all voted and chose the Edge-On-Galaxy. We chose this one because we thought it was unique and we would like to experience all of the discoveries that Hubble would find there. Many of us were also fascinated with the shape of the Edge-On-Galaxy. It had many unusual qualities like its lack of color. Many of the photos didn’t really challenge our interest and we thought this Edge-On-Galaxy would be filled with lots of exciting findings.

We decided to make our presentation three- dimensional and use recycled materials that we had at home. We made a large Hubble Telescope from soda bottles, egg cartons, and bubble wrap.

We made the main body of the telescope from plastic mayonnaise containers and made the longer piece by cutting off the top of bottles and sticking a bottle inside.

The next step was taping the two sections together and using wrapping paper tubes to make legs.

Now that we had the body done we went back to the lab and printed out our favorite pictures from the Hubble library.

We wrapped the bubble wrap around all of the pieces and used tape to attach all of our favorite Hubble photos. We used the winning Hubble Photo as the door on the telescope.

We had a Science Fair Night and we all wore our uniforms and displayed our telescope for the whole school to see. We had lots of questions about it and everyone loved it.

The other side of our telescope and a close up of the pictures we all chose.

These astronauts are wearing their uniforms and grouped around the finished Hubble Collage. We all learned a lot from this collage activity, especially what it is like to work together like a real team of astronauts might do. Everyone learned a lot about the Hubble Telescope and the missions that it has been on. We all hope the telescope will be around for a long time and that maybe some of us might become scientists that will use it someday.