woodchurch science

this is good. it shows you where apollo missions 11 to 17 landed (13 never made it). amazing that the landings were all so close to each other! google moon. you can also zoom in on each landing site and look at other sections of the moon. fascinating facts and figures.

this link takes you to the national schools observatory. you will need to register first but once done you can point the telescope to anywhere in space and download images. useful for 7l.

update: mr pooley has registered the school at this site and has about 100 pupil and 10 teacher sign ins to use up.

the perseid meteor shower is an annual event and shooting stars are set to grace the night sky with a spectacular light display this weekend. the meteor shower will reach its peak during the early hours of monday, but it will be visible from saturday night until tuesday morning. the celestial show will be most apparent in the north-eastern part of the sky near the perseus constellation. if the skies remain clear, it will offer stargazers the best opportunity for a few years to see the perseids. the shower this year coincides with a new moon, providing sky watchers with the dark skies necessary for excellent observing conditions.

if you’ve seen our wiki site (where you can write our webpages) you’ll know that it’s only about 10 to 15 pages. here’s a fantastic example of a wiki page where there are over 2000 pages! if you ever need any information about our moon this is the place to go.

the eclipse begins at 2018 gmt, with the moon totally immersed in the shadow of the earth between 2244 and 2358 gmt.
during “totality”, only light that has been filtered through the earths atmosphere reaches the moons surface, making it appear a reddish colour. should be largely cloudless in the northwest tonight so get out there…

astronomers have decided to call what was originally xena or snappily 2003 ub313, ‘eris’. in greek mythology, eris caused a quarrel among goddesses sparking one of the trojan wars. in astronomy circles, eris has also caused strife, forcing scientists to produce a strict definition of the term planet – and has led to pluto losing its planet status that it had held since its discovery in 1930. both eris and pluto (together with the largest asteroid, ceres) are now classified as ‘dwarf planets.

[listen to this blog entry!]

nasa has selected lockheed martin as the prime contractor to design, develop, and build orion, america’s spacecraft for a new generation of explorers.

the orion crew capsule will carry astronauts back to the moon and later to mars. the first flight with astronauts aboard is planned for no later than 2014. orion’s first flight to the moon is planned for no later than 2020.
orion improves on the best features of the apollo project and the space shuttle program, increasing the likelihood of success. orion is being designed to fly to the moon, but could also be used to service the international space station in low-earth orbit. more information together with simulated video clips here

yesterday astronomers agreed (?) to demote pluto and strip it of its planetary status so that the new solar system contains both planets and ‘dwarf’ planets – pluto amongst them. this has upset a lot of people, who have claimed that the vote was hijacked. apparently there were 10000 astronomers eligible but only 424 stayed to vote!

some people are so upset that they have even started selling bumper stickers in support of pluto. you can buy them here!

click here for a bigger version, or here for an enormous version!
the world’s astronomers have concluded two years of work defining the lower end of the planet scale – what defines the difference between “planets” and “solar system bodies”. if the definition is approved our solar system will consist of 12 planets: mercury, venus, earth, mars, ceres, jupiter, saturn, uranus, neptune, pluto, charon and 2003 ub313. the three new proposed planets are ceres, charon (pluto’s companion) and 2003 ub313.
in this artist’s impression (above) the planets are drawn to scale, but without correct relative distances.

so there’s a meeting today to decide if our 9th planet is to be downgraded, deleted or left where it is. apparently a bigger lump of rock, though equally far away is up for recognition as a planet with the catchy name of 2003UB313 (it has been nicknamed xena, of warrior princess fame). caltech’s mike brown has a really interesting and easy to understand website about it’s discovery.
if pluto does disappear from the 9, then it’s going to be interesting trying to come up with a mnemonic for our solar system: my very easy method just speeds up naming xena? doesn’t quite work now does it?