Comets Coming Soon!

NASA Science News for Feb. 6, 2013
A comet falling in from the distant reaches of the solar system could become a naked-eye object in early March. This is Comet Pan-STARRS's first visit to the inner solar system, so surprises are possible as its virgin ices are exposed to intense solar heating for the first time.

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NASA Science News for Jan. 18, 2013
Astronomers are keeping a close eye on newly-discovered Comet ISON, which could become visible in broad daylight later this year when it skims through the atmosphere of the sun. Some reporters have dubbed ISON the "Comet of the Century," but experts aren't yet sure how bright the sungrazer will become.

New Horizons Aims to Put Its Stamp on History

New Horizons will make history when it explores the Pluto system in July 2015. Plans for the flight past Pluto and its moons are well under way – and now, so is an effort to petition the U.S. Postal Service to commemorate the mission’s achievements on a stamp. “You can help make this happen,” says New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern. “We’re asking people to sign a petition, because the post office considers not just the merits of a new stamp proposal, but also whether it is supported by a significant number of people. This is a chance for us all to celebrate what American space exploration can achieve though hard work, technical excellence, the spirit of scientific inquiry, and the uniquely human drive to explore.”

Mars Rover Curiosity Takes Off

NASA's biggest and most capable Mars rover ever left Earth on Saturday morning in a picture perfect launch from Cape Canaveral. The new rover, named "Curiosity", is due to reach the Red Planet in August 2012.
FULL STORY at
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2011/26nov_msllaunch/

Vesta Fiesta: Dawn Set to Orbit Giant Asteroid on July 15th

On July 15, NASA's ion-propelled Dawn spacecraft will become the first mission to enter orbit around a main-belt asteroid.
FULL STORY at

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2011/15jul_dawn2/

Eyes to Skies Friday, August 12th at 7:00 pm.
Celebrate the beginning of Dawn's year-long exploration of new worlds. After close to four years cruising at stunning speeds, the robotic spacecraft is catching up to the object of its first destination in the main asteroid belt: Vesta. Don't Dawn and Vesta deserve a fiesta?
- Come hear talks from local Solar System Educator
- Enjoy kids’ activities like the Dawn Relay Race, Is the Asteroid like a Grape or a Raisin? and Vegetable Light Curves.

The Children's Science Explorium at Sugar Sand Park in Boca Raton, FL, 300 South Military Trail, Boca Raton, FL 33486 (Recommended for Ages 8+)

- All children under age 18 must be accompanied by a parent/guardian.
- No registration required - just show up! The telescope will be out for at least one hour after the scheduled start time.
http://www.scienceexplorium.org/family-programs
phone: (561) 347-3912
email: Explorium@myboca.us

Historic First: A Spacecraft Orbits Mercury

NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft successfully achieved orbit around Mercury at approximately 9 p.m. EDT on March 17th. This marks the first time a spacecraft has orbited the solar system's innermost planet.

FULL STORY at
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2011/18mar_orbitmercury/

Planets, Proportions & Pottery: How many sheets to Uranus?

Students model a scale solar system model with toilet paper, and calculate distance and period of time for revolution.

Using a scale of 1 standard sheet of toilet tissue as 10,000,000 miles, we can use the unwound length of the roll of tissue as a ruler for a scale model of our solar system.
Calculate the distance of the planets using a scale of one tissue = 10,000,000 miles. One AU of 93,000,000 miles would be 9 1/3 sheets, 1.52 AU of 141,360,00 miles would be 14.1 sheets, etc.

Using a roll of school-grade toilet tissue, mark off the distances to the planets. Indicate planet placement at each of the appropriate distances.

Seminole Ridge SECME Awarded Grant For Model Solar System

THE TOWN CRIER, Vol. 30, Num. 36, Sept. 4 - 10, 2009

Seminole Ridge SECME Awarded Grant For Model Solar System

The Education Foundation of Palm Beach County has awarded a $1,000 grant to the Seminole Ridge High School SECME Club for “Planets, Proportions and Pottery,” an interdisciplinary exploration of art, science and math. Their scale model of the solar system will encompass public school campuses and community supporters across the county, starting with the “sun” at Seminole Ridge and expanding to sites at other schools and businesses to give students, parents and the community a visual understanding of the vast distances involved in space exploration.

For this project, students will use proportional mathematics and ceramics construction, working with NASA images to create in clay textures and patterns of continents and craters, then glazing their globes. The finished products, with captions and location graphics, will be viewable at the appropriate “scale” distance in display boxes at feeder schools and SRHS business supporters: “Earth” at Lion Country Safari; “Mars” at Loxahatchee Groves and Golden Groves elementary schools and Western Pines Middle School; and “Asteroids” at Pierce Hammock, Acreage Pines, Royal Palm Beach and H.L. Johnson elementary schools. To model the sun, SECME proposes planting an 86-foot circle of sunflowers in the center of the courtyard.

SECME Awarded Grant for Model Solar System

The Education Foundation of Palm Beach County has awarded a $1,000.00 grant to our SECME club for ‘Planets, Proportions and Pottery,’ an interdisciplinary exploration of art, science, and math. Their scale model of our solar system will encompass public school campuses and community supporters across the county, starting with the ‘Sun’ at Seminole Ridge and expanding to sites at other schools and businesses to give students, parents, and the community a visual understanding of the vast distances involved in space exploration. For this project, students will use proportional mathematics and ceramics construction, working with NASA images to create in clay textures and patterns of continents and craters, then glazing their globes. The finished products, with captions and location graphics, will be viewable (at the appropriate ‘scale’ distance) in display boxes at feeder schools and SRHS business supporters—for example, ‘Earth’ at Lion Country Safari; ‘Mars’ at Loxahatchee Groves and Golden Groves Elementary and Western Pines Middle; asteroids at Pierce Hammock, Acreage Pines, Royal Palm Beach, and HL Johnson Elementary). To model the sun, SECME proposes planting an 86-foot circle of sunflowers in the center of our courtyard.

Planets, Proportions, and Pottery in Palm Beach County School District - The Seminole Ridge Solar System Scale Model.

Planets, Proportions, and Pottery in Palm Beach County School District

The Seminole Ridge Solar System Scale Model.

Statement I: Project Description

The Seminole Solar System Scale Model is an interdisciplinary exploration of art, science, and math. The model will include multiple displays, each representing one of the naked eye planets, placed at a scaled distance from the first marker – the Sun. The model will encompass the campuses across the Indian Trail Improvement District, starting with the Sun at Seminole Ridge High School, and stretching back to the elementary and middle school through which pupils progressed. The displays will give students, parents, teachers, and community partners a visual understanding of the vast distances spacecraft must travel to explore other regions of the solar system.

In a classroom activity, students relate the concepts of measurement to similarity and proportionality in real-world situations and accurately scale the distance between the Sun and the planets of the solar system. Adapted from NASA teacher guides and the Google Lunar X Prize, students use a basketball to depict Earth’s size. Logically progressing, students are asked how far to place away the Sun and the Moon to accurately represent an eclipse. Within these ratios, students compute a scale model of the solar system. Students next concretely represent those worlds using ceramics. Working with NASA images from unmanned missions as inspiration and for accuracy, student artists use slab and coil methods in construction. They will create textures and pattern in clay as they create relief depictions of topographic features such as continents and craters. And they will explore pottery decorating techniques as they glaze their globes. The “finished” products with explanatory captions and locational graphics will be viewable at the feeder schools to Seminole Ridge High. Over 3000 individuals in the community can potentially be reached through class work and art display:

The Sun - by far the largest thing in our solar system - is 86 feet wide sitting in the center of Seminole Ridge Community High School.

Closest to the Sun is Mercury, at the Winn-Dixie supermarket plaza (5060 Seminole Pratt Whitney Road, Loxahatchee). In reality, the average distance from the Sun to Mercury is roughly 58,000,000 km (35,000,000 miles) or 0.4 AU.

Earth's orbit takes it at the perfect distance from the Sun for life to flourish, through Frontier Elementary and Oscela Creek Middle, and Lion Country Safari. Venus is too hot. Mars is too cold. Scientists sometimes call our region of space the "Goldilocks Zone" because it appears to be just right for life. Earth's average distance to the Sun is about 150,000,000 km (93,000,000 miles) from the Sun. That's 1 AU.

Mars' orbit stretches through Loxahatchee Groves Elementary, Golden Groves Elementary School and Western Pines Middle, and at the Publix Supermarket plaza (7050 Seminole Pratt Whitney Road, Loxahatchee). The red planet is about 228,000,000 km (142,000,000 miles) on average from the Sun. That's 1.5 AU.

The main Asteroid Belt extends over Pierce Hammock Elementary School, Acreage Pines Elementary, Royal Palm Beach Elementary, HL Johnson Elementary, and Loxahatchee Groves Park on Southern Blvd. Asteroids roam far and wide in our solar system. But most are contained within the main asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars. In real distances that's an average of roughly 300,000,000 to 600,000,000 km (186,000,000 to 372,000,000 miles) from the Sun, or 2 to 4 AU.

Jupiter's realm extends to Palm Beach Central High, the Mall at Wellington Green, and North Palm Beach County General Aviation Airport. Our solar system's largest planet is an average distance of 778,000,000 km (484,000,000 miles) from the Sun. That's 5.2 AU.

Saturn circles the Sun at Christa McAulifee Middle, Park Vista Community High, John D. McArthur Beach State Park, Scripps Institute (130 Scripps Way, near Jupiter, FL 33458), the South Florida Science Museum (4801 Dreher Trail N., West Palm Beach, FL 33415), Ocean Reef Park in Lake Worth, and Palm Beach County Park Airport in Lake Worth. The ringed world is about 1,427,000,000 km (887,000,000 miles) from the Sun, or 9.5 AU.

Alpha Centauri would be twice the distance to the Moon (the real Moon) on this scale! The next nearest star is 39,900,000,000,000 km (25,370,000,000,000 miles) from the Sun, or 271,000 AU away. This means at a distance of 4.3 light-years, we see this triple star system not as it is, but as it was 4 years ago, when the senior was still a freshman, the 8th grader was still in elementary school, in 4th grade.



Statement II: Benefit to Students

A county wide model of the solar system should provide visual learners the background to comprehend the scale, which compliments the mathematic conceptualization derived from the classroom activity. A tactile experience of grandeur helps contextualize the following grade appropriate benchmarks for the Florida Sunshine State Standards. Grade 4: recognize that Earth revolves around the Sun in a year. Grade 5: recognize the major common characteristics of all planets and compare/contrast the properties of inner and outer planets; Grade 8: recognize that there are enormous distances between objects in space; compare and contrast the properties of objects in the Solar System, such as gravitational force, distance from the Sun, speed, movement, temperature, and atmospheric conditions. Grades 9-12: develop logical connections through physical principles, including Kepler's and Newton's Laws about the relationships and the effects of Earth, Moon, and Sun on each other. The Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) is an annual criterion-referenced test assessing student achievement on the knowledge and skills described in the state curriculum framework called the Sunshine State Standards. The classroom activities and hands-on lab exercises include practice in FCAT performance tasks. The target for area school population (3000+ students) participating in the solar system scale model is 100% of students at Level 3 or above mastery scores for FCAT related review in mathematics, reading, and science during classroom activity. Students will also impacted by mastering basic techniques (i.e., clay preparation, hand-building, preparing glazes, decorating, surface design, and kiln operation) to produce ceramics and pottery, and demonstrate use of collaborative skills to exhibit works of art in the school and community. As such, evaluating the effectiveness of artistic mastery from a planet plate is dependant on conceptualization (design, color, originality) and execution (workmanship and skill). Lastly, public comments are welcome by the principals.

Appendix

• The Maine Solar System Model extends from Presque Isle to Houlton, ME to illustrate planet size and distance, over forty miles (64.4 km) from Pluto to Sun.


• Planet Panorama This Ohio University-produced exhibit brings the relative size and distance between planets in our solar system into focus on a football field.