The Solar System The following sheets are various elements picked up from the Internet and put together to provide information for Scout Groups. They are mainly aimed at fun facts, with a small element of teaching.

Remembering the Planets The best way to remember anything, is to use something you can relate to. One of the best examples of this are Mnemonics. For the planets, a fun one for Scouts is: My Violent Evil Monster Just Scared Us Nuts

Mercury Venus Earth Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune How big does the Sun look from the planets? My Violent Evil Monster Just Scared Us Nuts

A Solar System Model You can make a “model” of the Solar system, using a standard toilet roll (clean of course). PS, you may need 2. The next sheet gives the rough distances in sheets between the sun and the planets. This is best achieved in a field, as the furthest planet away from the Sun is 280 sheets away. (NB, Pluto has been left in, but it is no longer classed as a “planet”). It can be a fun counting, teamwork and learning exercise. Assign a scout to each planet to get the feel of the distances involved. Footnote: As orbits are elliptical, it is not an exact science, but is close enough for demonstration!

THE TOILET PAPER SOLAR SYSTEM SCALE MODE: Using a scale of 1 standard sheet of toilet tissue as 10,000,000 miles, we can use the unwound length of the roll of tissue as a ruler for a scale model of the solar system. Celestial Object Number of Sheets from Sun # of Tissues from previous object Sun0.0 Mercury3.6 Venus Earth Mars Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune Pluto (avg. orbit) Q. Alpha Centari is the closest visible star to our Sun. How many sheets away is it? Answer: It is located 25,000,000,000,000 miles away or 2,500,000 sheets away (200 miles on this scale). In this model, the Sun is 0.4 inch in diameter and the Earth is inch in diameter.

The moon This is our closest celestial neighbour. What follows is a selection of images –1 – The full moon –2 – The phases of the moon (i.e. what we see from Earth) –3 – Neil Armstrong’s footprint

Fun facts

The relative sizes of plants and stars

Star Spotting

Glow Star Models The next sheets are better printed on A3 and the glow-stars used over the stars. This allows the Scout to visualise the constellations in the night sky. This is best done inside to start with, with the glow-stars “charging” under the lights. Turn off the lights after a period of time, view the glow- star constellation then try and find them in the night sky, with your glow-star model as reference

The Plough / Big Dipper

Orion Betelgeuse Rigel Orion is first found by finding Orion’s belt, the three stars close together in a line Orion is also known as “The Archer”. Can you see why?