Foucault’s Pendulum

This diagram shows typical paths for the Moon during the year (and the resulting look of the waxing crescent Moon). Notice that during winter, the Moon sets north of west. During the summer, the Moon sets south of west.

Hubble Telescope

Doppler Effect Referred to as the “Red-shift” Electromagnetic Energy, or Light from a galaxy speeding away from our solar system is stretched into a longer wavelength (red spectrum)

Mercury closest planet to the sun, it takes 59 days to make one rotation but only 88 days to orbit the Sun. That means that there are fewer than 2 days in a year! Venus is the brightest planet in our sky. It is called Earth’s sister planet because it is a similar size. Venus is hotter than Mercury due to trapped heat in it’s dense C0 2 atmosphere. Venus’s day is longer than it’s year! Mars is the Red Planet covered in a thin C0 2 atmosphere. Most explored of all the planets beyond Earth. Mars is the home of "Olympus Mons", the largest volcano found in the solar system. It stands about 27 kilometers high (18 miles) with a crater 81 kilometers wide. Earth is unique in that it is the only planet with an abundant quantity of water in all three states of matter – solid, liquid and gas. The “Goldilocks Planet” – everything just right!

Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system, but it spins very quickly on its axis. First of the Jovian or Gas Giants. Gas Giants have solid cores. Saturn is the second biggest planet, but it’s also the lightest planet. If there was a bathtub big enough to hold Saturn, it would float in the water! Uranus’ axis is at a 97 degree angle, meaning that it orbits lying on its side! Neptune was discovered in 1846 (over 150 years ago). Since that time it has still yet to make a complete orbit around the sun, because one Neptune year lasts 165 Earth years! Pluto we miss you! Now called a Dwarf Planet. Pluto’s orbit sometimes brings it closer to the Sun than Neptune. It jumped ahead of Neptune on September 5, 1989 and remained there until February, 1999 when it went back to being the farthest due to it’s very eccentric orbit.

Examples of Ellipse Eccentricity Eccentricity = distance between foci length of major axis

Polaris is the brightest star Polaris is located due North and will always be there You can see nearly all the stars there are The stars aren't there in the daytime The Sun and Moon are stationary with respect to the stars A constellation is a group of stars all near each other in space The brightest constellations are Zodiac signs The shape of a constellation has physical or metaphysical significance The patterns of the constellations are unchanging Meteors are falling stars Top 10 Astronomy Misconceptions