Solar System Adventure Station

Event: STEM Adventure

Station #2 – Solar System Adventure- Requirement #2A

Time: 15-20 Minutes

Objective: (a) Demonstrate how to focus a simple telescope or binoculars. (b) Draw a diagram of our solar system. Identify the planets and other objects. (c) Draw and label five constellations. See if you can locate any of them in the sky using a star map.

Activity 1: Build and Focus a Telescope

History of telescopes: The telescope was introduced to astronomy in 1609 by the great Italian scientist Galileo Galilei -- the first man to see the craters on the moon. He went on to discover sunspots, the four large moons of Jupiter and the rings of Saturn. His telescope was similar to opera glasses. It used an arrangement of glass lenses to magnify objects. This provided up to 30 times magnification and a narrow field of view, so Galileo could see no more than a quarter of the moon's face without repositioning his telescope.

Telescope Materials:

2 Cardboard Tubes 2 lenses Foam Cap

Step 1: Test each individual lens

First place the larger lens in the red cap. Then connect the lens and cap to the tube. What do you see out of this lens?

Next remove the red cap and lens from the tube. Place the smaller lens inside the circular foam. Then place the foam and lens in the tube.

What do you see out of this lens? Now combine all parts of the telescopes. Insert the red cap and large lens at one end of the tube

and the circular foam with the smaller lens at the other end of the tube. Spend 1 minute focusing the Telescope

Activity 2: Drawing the Solar System

1. Draw a circle in the middle of your picture. This will be the Sun. Color it yellow or/and draw sunspots like on the sun orange. Rays are optional.

2. Draw a much, much smaller circle near the Sun. This will be Mercury. Color it brown.

3. Draw Venus. Draw it further away from the Sun than Mercury. It is a bit bigger than Mercury, but much smaller than the Sun. It is greenish- brown because of its gaseous clouds.

4. Further away from the Sun is Earth, our home planet. Draw it the same size as Venus. The Earth is blue (water) and green (continents and island). Next to the Earth, draw the Moon, draw a small, round, gray circle close to the Earth.

5. Draw Mars. It is smaller than Earth but bigger than Mercury. Reddish, it has two small, irregular natural satellites ("Moons"), Deimos and Phobos. Draw them grey

6. After that, draw some small irregular grey shapes beyond Mars. This will be the Asteroid Belt.

7. If you want to draw Ceres, the dwarf planet within the asteroid belt, draw an asteroid about the size of Pluto, with a reddish- brown color, almost like Mars.

8. Draw an orange and white striped planet much bigger than Earth, but still much smaller than the Sun. Draw a thin ring around it. This is Jupiter.

9. Uranus, bluish-green in color, is the next planet. Draw thin, tilted rings around it10. Draw Neptune in the same manner that you drew Uranus, with a dark bluish- purple

color. A few rings and 14 natural satellites surround this planet, and in the atmosphere there are white clouds, some of which are storms.

11. If you want to draw Pluto, a dwarf planet, draw it even smaller than Mercury. It is brown with blue- white spots for icy oceans. Draw its largest moon, Charon, almost its size. Then draw the other four, much smaller moons, named Nyx, Hydra, Kerberos, and Styx

Constellations

Print 100 Copies and distribute to scouts to trace or color in.