CELESTIAL OBJECTS PICTURES, part 1
1. Place cards white-side up and mix.Each team member choose 2 cards.
2. In your notebook, describe observations and inferences about each of your images.
CELESTIAL OBJECTS PICTURES
3. Share what you wrote with your teammates.
4. As a team, look at the remaining images and share a couple of quick observations and inferences for each.
CELESTIAL OBJECTS PICTURES, part 2
1. As a team, sort or organize all 12 images any way you want.
2. Large-group discussion.
3. Sort by:
– size
– distance from earth
– composition
CELESTIAL OBJECTS PICTURES, part 3
Reading passage on basic objects.
(reading directions)
Re-sort your cards one more time…
Celestial Celestial ObjectsObjects
Celestial: of or relating to the Celestial: of or relating to the skysky
Our solar system includes a star (our sun), planets, and moons, as well as asteroids, meteoroids and comets.
A planet is a A planet is a celestial body…celestial body…
that orbits the sunthat orbits the sunhas sufficient mass to has sufficient mass to
assume a spherical shapeassume a spherical shapehas cleared its orbital pathhas cleared its orbital path
We call our moon “The Moon” but many other planets have moons as well.
Mars has two moons: Phobos and Deimos
Jupiter is currently known to have 63 moons.
The four largest moons are Io, Callisto, Ganymede and Europa.
All planets except Mercury and Venus have at least one natural satellite…
…for a total of 166
moons.
StarsStars
Stars are celestial Stars are celestial bodies of hot gases bodies of hot gases that radiate energy that radiate energy due to their due to their internal nuclear internal nuclear reactions.reactions.
Solar Systems•Solar systems are also celestial
objects•Our solar system is not the only one•Many other solar systems are
presumed to exist•Some have actually been discovered,
one containing five known planets
An artist's concept shows four of the five planets that orbit 55 Cancri, a star much like our own (and located 41 light years away from Earth).
Nebulae (s: nebula)
•A nebula is a star “nursery” or an interstellar cloud of dust and gas from which stars are formed
Cat’s Eye NebulaCygnus Loop
Galaxy•A galaxy is group of stars,
usually numbering in the billions, that orbit a common mass and travel through the universe as a single unit
The spiral Andromeda Galaxy is our nearest galaxy
neighbor
…yet it is still more than 2 million light years away!