You're A Star!

One of the things mentioned in the Oort Cloud work last week was a solar flare. Here's a picture that NASA took of the sun this week. You can see a huge solar flare in the bottom left corner. The flare was 700 000km long!

Playing Games

We went down to visit the YEs today, Mrs Jones' class in fact. We took the various board games we had made at the start of our Astronomy topic and the little kids seemed to really enjoy them. We did notice that they found it difficult to count up to 6, which made some of the games quite hard, and they were very shy to start off with but they almost all enjoyed themselves by the end of our visit and, as you can see, they were all smiling and happy by the end.

Our Place In Space

Here's the video that we watched in class. It gives you a really good idea about the size of Earth and the Sun compared to some of the other things in space. We are really tiny!

Today's Homework

1. Daily Maths 1 + 5
2. Reading Log - choose 2 activites for your book. Remember to highlight the ones you have done.
   
3. Research a constellation - choose a constellation, answer the questions we discussed in class. You might want to think of your own questions as well. Write at least 5 questions and answers. You could start looking for information here.

If you want to download that amazing star program that we were using in class today, you can get it from here. It's called 'Stellarium'. It's not a big program so you should be able to download it quite quickly.

The Oort Cloud

We'll be starting a new piece of writing soon, about the Oort Cloud. If, like me, you had never heard of the Oort Cloud before, here's a short video about it.



It's a cluster of billions of asteroids, far out in our solar system. Some theories suggest that the Earth will one day collide with some of these asteroids, causing immense devastation. Let's hope it doesn't come soon!

Here's a link to some other videos about the solar system and our universe that I put on the blog last year.

A Long Time Ago, In A Galaxy Far, Far Away...

Here's a few videos that might be interesting or useful. We saw a couple of them in class on Saturday.

Journey to the Edge of the Universe


The Most Important Image Ever Taken


The Real Perspective on the Solar System


Inside The Sun

It's The End Of The World As We Know It!

The World Is About To End!!!!! Well, sort of, maybe. There is an experiment about to take place in Switzerland in which scientists will try to create the same conditions that existed in the Big Bang. They are going to smash together tiny particles of matter in giant underground tunnels at almost the speed of light. The temperature will reach 100 000 times hotter than the core of the Sun and it's possible that the energy created will destroy the Earth. If it does, there will be no homework next week.

You can find out more by watching the video on the BBC site.