1. Welcome back to the planetarium 5th grade Mr. Taylor

2. Hubble Space Telescope In 1990 the Hubble space telescope was launched to see objects in space more clearly In the last 20+ years it has made many discoveries – age of the universe – black holes in the center of all galaxies –How stars and planets form –The most distant galaxies The Spitzer space telescope and the Chandra space telescope also study the universe It circles the Earth every 90 minutes

3. Hubble

6. Hubble’s greatest hits

7. Hubble recently helped discover planets around other stars and analyze the atmosphere of several

8. Kepler has found over 1200 planets around different stars

9. Where are we? - 200 billion stars in the Milky Way - contains a minimum of 100 billion planets

10. new planets being discovered 54 are Earth sized and in habitable zone

11. Space Exploration 1957 – the launch of Sputnik by Russia started the space race

12. April 12, 1961 Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin (left, on the way to the launch pad) became the first human in space, making a 108-minute orbital flight in his Vostok 1 spacecraft. Last year was the 50th anniversary of the first manned space flight

13. Apollo missions There were 17 Apollo mission to the moon, including 6 that landed on the moon and performed many experiments

15. Earthrise from Apollo 16

16. Space Shuttle There were over 130 space shuttle missions from 1981-2011 Jobs for the space shuttle include launching satellites, performing science experiments, and bringing astronauts to the space station

17. Space shuttles Were retired after 30 years of space flights including 135 separate launches Discovery flew its last mission in late February, Endeavor on April 29th, and Atlantis was the last shuttle to fly on July 8 th, 2011 Two space shuttles have been lost – Challenger in 1986 and Columbia in 2003

18. Discovery

19. Atlantis

20. Space Station The space station has been in orbit around Earth since 1998 and is run by many different nations including the US There are several astronauts there now

21. Space Station

22. Space Station – spacewalk 5/22/11

25. Soyuz launch 4/5/11

26. Constellation Mission Constellation will fly first to the space station, then the Moon, and finally Mars

27. Mercury and Venus The Messenger spacecraft is orbiting around Mercury and studying the smallest planet In 1990 Magellan used RADAR to map the surface of Venus

28. MESSENGER mission In March became first spacecraft to orbit the planet Mercury First image from orbit

29. Mars Missions We have sent several unmanned missions to Mars to study its past and present history, and the possibility of humans visiting some dayunmanned missions

31. Current Events – Spirit is “dead”Spirit

32. Mars rover “Curiosity”Curiosity Curiosity is twice as long (about 2.8 meters, or 9 feet) and four times as heavy as Spirit and Opportunity (size of a Mini-Cooper) Has a new way of landinglanding 10 tools to examine rocks, soil and the atmosphere 6 wheels Nuclear battery instead of solar powered “Face” of Curiosity

33. Missions to the Outer Planets Voyager I and II missions launched in 1977 to study Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune Both spacecraft have left the solar system, but continue to send information back to us from about 10 billion miles away

34. Missions to the Outer Planets The Galileo mission visited and studied Jupiter and its moons in 1995 Cassini-Huygens is currently studying Saturn and its largest moon TitanCassini-Huygens

35. Missions to the Outer Planets The Galileo mission studied Jupiter’s moons including the 4 largest moons: Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto

36. Titan Saturn’s largest moon Titan is the second biggest moon in the solar system, is bigger than Mercury, and has an atmosphere and weather – even ice volcanoes

37. Pluto The New Horizon mission was launched to study Pluto in 2006, and will reach Pluto in 2015. It is the fastest spacecraft ever launched and flies at 50,000 mph.

38. Other solar system objects studied Comets Asteroids The sun Earth’s atmosphere

39. Winter constellations:

40. In the sky this week:

41. In the sky tonight: Sirius is not only the brightest star after the Sun, but at a distance of 8.6 light-years, it's also the nearest star that's visible to the naked eye from mid-northern latitudes. 8.6 light years = 50,000,000,000,000 miles Canis Major: The Big Dog

42. In the night sky The 6 brightest objects in the night sky can be seen from Earth right now: –the Moon (seriously bright!) Venus (magnitude -4.3) Jupiter (magnitude -2.2) Sirius (magnitude -1.4) Mars (magnitude -1.2) Mercury (magnitude -1.2 and fading)

43. In the sky this week:

45. Jupiter, Venus, Mars Waning gibbous moon Pegasus, Andromeda, Taurus, Orion Cepheus, Cassiopeia, The “dippers”, Draco Mars rover “Curiosity” – Lands 8/6/12Curiosity