1. Test Your Astronomical Awareness (for fun only!)

2. Summer Heat
It’s hot in the summer months because the Earth is somewhat closer to the Sun in Jun-Jul-Aug, farther away in Dec-Jan-Feb.

3. Black Holes
If the Sun became a black hole, the Earth (and the planets that are even closer to it, Venus and Mercury) would be sucked into it.

4. Weightlessness
The astronauts in the International Space Station experience weightlessness because they are orbiting so high up that the Earth’s gravity is essentially negligible.

5. Lunar Phases
The changing phases of the Moon are a consequence of the changing amount of the Earth’s shadow that falls on it.

6. Christopher Columbus
Before the time of Columbus, learned people in Europe believed the world to be flat.

7. Circulating Water
Water draining from a sink or toilet circulates in one direction in the Northern hemisphere, but in the opposite sense in the Southern hemisphere.

8. From ‘Down Under’
From Sydney, Australia, the Moon appears upside-down relative to the way we see it in Kingston, Canada.

9. How did we do?
The answers are: False True

10. Relevant Evidence

11. Earth and Moon (from a space probe on the way to Mars)

13. Columbus

14. The European Understanding

15. Swirling Waters

16. But: Hurricane Ivan, 2004

17. Upside Down? Consider This