Monday, March 7, 2011

Stars and constellations


National Geographic Kids has some striking photos from NASA of stars and constellations, as well as of the planets we talked about last week. Scroll down on the page for photos of the moon and sun as well.

Here's a printable sheet of constellations and their patterns! This site is a good place for excited stargazers to start.

Here's a preview of a PBS film on the wonders of stargazing, entitled "Seeing in the Dark." The telescopes are cool, too. The film's site has some beautiful photos, how-to videos on stargazing, and your sky tonight feature. They have a great list of activities for teachers, including telling time by the Big Dipper, showing distances in the solar system with rolls of toilet paper, and how escaping slaves learned to use the Big Dipper to escape North! I think we're going to make Uncle Al's starwheel so that we can look for the right constellations at the right time of year.

On this site, a NASA astronomer answers some of kids' common questions about stars--what they are, what they're made of, how far away they are...you get the idea.

For younger elementary school students, this experiment explains an elementary version of why stars twinkle.

Here's a project to make constellation placemats from black construction paper--and one to make window constellations.

And here's another (slightly overwhelming) list of links on constellations and stars.

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