Australian Aboriginal Astronomy: When Giant Fish Leaves the Sky I would like to introduce our readers to a video presentation made by John Morieson and Alex Cherney about the astronomy of the Boorong clan (of the Wergaia language in northwest Victoria). John Morieson is an historian in Victoria who has spent many years researching the astronomy of the Boorong and other Victorian Aboriginal groups. He completed an MA thesis at the University of Melbourne in 1996, where he reanalysed the work of William Edward Stanbridge regarding Boorong astronomy. Alex Cherney is an amateur astronomer and astrophotographer in Melbourne. He has produced amazingly beautiful photography of the sky and has won several awards and honourable mentions in astrophotography competitions, including the STARMUS astrophotography contest, the David Malin awards, and several NASA "Astronomy Picture of the Day" posts. This video was presented at the 2011 SEAC conference in Portugal.
Planets - Zoom Astronomy Advertisement. EnchantedLearning.com is a user-supported site. As a bonus, site members have access to a banner-ad-free version of the site, with print-friendly pages.Click here to learn more. (Already a member? The Planets (plus the Dwarf Planet Pluto) Our solar system consists of the sun, eight planets, moons, many dwarf planets (or plutoids), an asteroid belt, comets, meteors, and others. The eight planets that orbit the sun are (in order from the sun): Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune. Easy ways to remember the order of the planets (plus Pluto) are the mnemonics: "My Very Excellent Mother Just Sent Us Nine Pizzas" and "My Very Easy Method Just Simplifies Us Naming Planets" The first letter of each of these words represents a planet - in the correct order. The largest planet is Jupiter. The inner planets are: Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars. Generally, the farther from the Sun, the cooler the planet. Density of the Planets The Earth is the densest planet.
Astronomy For Kids - KidsAstronomy.com Total Solar Eclipse 2012 - Total Solar Eclipse 2012 Education Resources Phases of the Moon and Percent of the Moon Illuminated Copyright Antonio Cidadao. Used by permission. Click on picture to see large version. From any location on the Earth, the Moon appears to be a circular disk which, at any specific time, is illuminated to some degree by direct sunlight. New Moon - The Moon's unilluminated side is facing the Earth. Waxing Crescent - The Moon appears to be partly but less than one-half illuminated by direct sunlight. First Quarter - One-half of the Moon appears to be illuminated by direct sunlight. Waxing Gibbous - The Moon appears to be more than one-half but not fully illuminated by direct sunlight. Full Moon - The Moon's illuminated side is facing the Earth. Waning Gibbous - The Moon appears to be more than one-half but not fully illuminated by direct sunlight. Last Quarter - One-half of the Moon appears to be illuminated by direct sunlight. Waning Crescent - The Moon appears to be partly but less than one-half illuminated by direct sunlight. Lunation Movie Copyright Antonio Cidadao.
NASA IMAGE Education This web site provides teachers, students and the interested public with the latest information about auroral science, and the study of Earth's magnetic field. The goal of the IMAGE mission's education and public outreach program (POETRY) is to explain how solar storms affect the Earth, and to correct misconceptions about Earth's magnetic field, its radiation belts, and why we have aurora. Here are some questions that you may have encountered in your textbooks: What causes aurora? What is the solar wind? What is a magnetic field? What are the Van Allen Belts? What is space weather? How does space weather affect us Answer
Stellarium The Last Shuttle Solar System, Solar System Information Our Cosmic Neighborhood From our small world we have gazed upon the cosmic ocean for thousands of years. Ancient astronomers observed points of light that appeared to move among the stars. They called these objects "planets," meaning wanderers, and named them after Roman deities—Jupiter, king of the gods; Mars, the god of war; Mercury, messenger of the gods; Venus, the goddes of love and beauty, and Saturn, father of Jupiter and god of agriculture. The stargazers also observed comets with sparkling tails, and meteors or shooting stars apparently falling from the sky. Since the invention of the telescope, three more planets have been discovered in our solar system: Uranus (1781), Neptune (1846), and, now downgraded to a dwarf planet, Pluto (1930). The four planets closest to the sun—Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars—are called the terrestrial planets because they have solid rocky surfaces. Nearly every planet—and some of the moons—has an atmosphere. Moons, Rings, and Magnetospheres
SVS Animation 4000 - Moon Phase and Libration, 2013 Dial-A-Moon The animation archived on this page shows the geocentric phase, libration, position angle of the axis, and apparent diameter of the Moon throughout the year 2013, at hourly intervals. Until the end of 2013, the initial Dial-A-Moon image will be the frame from this animation for the current hour. More in this series: 2014 | 2014 South | 2013 South | 2012 | 2011 The jagged, cratered, airless lunar terrain casts sharp shadows that clearly outline the Moon's surface features for observers on Earth. The Moon always keeps the same face to us, but not exactly the same face. The word comes from the Latin for "balance scale" (as does the name of the zodiac constellation Libra) and refers to the way such a scale tips up and down on alternating sides. The Moon is subject to other motions as well. The most noticed monthly variation in the Moon's appearance is the cycle of phases, caused by the changing angle of the Sun as the Moon orbits the Earth.
Solar System Scope Science & Environment - How big is space? Big questions demand big answers. And here at Future we have a hard time thinking of a question bigger than: how big is space? So, we set about trying to illustrate it. The resulting picture is so large that we could not squeeze it all on to one image in Photoshop. Printed out, the graphic spans 27 pages of A4 paper. But even at this size we only managed to get to the edge of our Solar System – known as the heliosphere. Yet even within this relatively small corner of space, there is a lot packed in there. What is the most distant man-made object? Scroll (and scroll... and scroll) through our monster graphic to explore our cosmic neighbourhood. And if you want to check out the data we used to construct it, you can find it here.