Earthrise, taken by astronauts from the Apollo 8 mission. Image courtesy http://nasa.gov

The Apollo 8 mission was the first manned voyage to orbit the moon.  Frank Borman, William Anders and James Lovell were the astronauts in this historic mission.  On Christmas Eve 1968, they got to see the Earth rising over the moon’s surface just like the sun.  William Anders took the picture you see to the right.  Known as Earthrise, it became one of the most famous pictures taken from space.  Galen Rowell, a wilderness photographer, called it

…the most influential environmental photograph ever taken.

It changed how many people viewed the Earth, including astronaut Lovell of the Apollo 8 mission.  He said Earth looked like a

…fragile oasis in the vastness of space.

On Christmas Eve of 1968, the crew of the Apollo 8 mission read the creation story from Genesis 1 to the people back on Earth.  In memory of this, the US Postal Service made a stamp including the picture of Earthrise and the words “In the beginning God…”

Commemorative stamp of the Apollo 8 mission, issued by the US Postal Service

In the second century, the astronomer Ptolemy described the Earth as a globe at the center of the universe.  This is called geocentrism.  Geo means Earth and centrism means center.  People believed this for a very long time because when you look at the sky, it seems like everything is orbiting around us.  There are also some verses in the bible which talk about the foundations of the Earth, and many religious leaders thought these verses meant that the Earth did not move in space.

In 550 BC, Pythagorus said the Earth was round and that it was not the center of the universe.  He thought it orbited around a point.  Many years later, in 1543, Nicolaus Copernicus said the Earth orbited the sun with the other planets.  This is called heliocentrism.  Helios means sun.

Since then, there have been many advancements in our knowledge of our solar system, thanks to the hard work of many astronomers over the centuries and incredible advancements in technology.  With bigger telescopes, different kinds of telescopes and the ability to send probes to other planets, we have learned a lot about the universe and the planet Earth.  Please join us as we tour our solar system and learn more about our amazing home.

If you do any of the projects in this edition, or make your own artwork of the solar system, please email me a picture of it at thesciencemouseATgmailDOTcom and I will include it in my Reader Gallery!

The Sun, the center of the solar system

The terrestrial planets

Mercury

Venus, Our Sister Planet

Earth, Our Home in Space

Mars, the Red Planet

The Gas Giants

Jupiter, the Largest Planet in Our Solar System

Saturn, Ringed Beauty

Uranus

Neptune, Uranus’ Sister Planet

Other Features

An interview with amateur astronomer Jay Ryan

Make Your Own Science Journal

Copernicus: Genius or Fool?

Robert Goddard’s Rocket

Apollo Space Program in Lego

Telescope Crazy!

A Review of Ben Morgan’s Stargazer

Galileo’s Journal, A Book Review

Make Your Own Solar Cookies

Constellations, a Haiku

A portrait of Nicolaus Copernicus from the early 16th century. Image courtesy http://wikipedia.org

Nicolaus Copernicus is known as the Father of Modern Astronomy. His idea that the earth revolves around the sun was not very popular, but it was very important. He was called a “fool” by church leaders, but they did not know that God made the solar system to revolve around the sun.

Copernicus was born February 19, 1473 in Torun, Poland. He was the youngest of four children. His father was a copper trader and his mother was an aristocrat. When his father died, his uncle became a father figure to him.

He was a very educated man. Copernicus studied canon law and medicine but his uncle hoped he would become a bishop in the church. Both of their plans changed when he met da Ferrara, a famous astronomer.  He became his assistant. He continued his studies in medicine and canon and received his doctorate degree in 1503.

The heliocentric model of the solar system which appeared in Copernicus' book, "De revolutionibus orbium coelestium" Image courtesy http://wikipedia.org

When he returned home after studying abroad, he worked in the church, practiced medicine and studied astronomy. He began to question the idea of his day, that the earth was the center of the universe. He calculated a theory that the earth actually revolves around the sun. He could not prove it. Telescopes would not be invented until fifty years after he died. He also believed that the earth rotates on an axis and that it affects the star patterns we see.

His ideas were not very popular in the church. They thought Scripture said the earth is the center and they thought he was a heretic. John Calvin and Martin Luther, leaders of the Reformation, wrote mean things about him, calling him a fool. But he stuck to his answer and believed he was right. Today we know that he was.

Sophia Hawthorne is 8 years old and learns at home with her sister and two brothers. She loves to write. Her favorite color is blue. When she grows up she wants to be an author and a ballerina.  Visit her Etsy shop, My Sister and Me!

Galileo’s Journal by Jeanne Pettenati is a fictional book written as if it were Galileo’s real journal.  The events really happened.

During this time, Galileo made lots of discoveries.  He heard rumors about a spyglass that made far away things seem bigger. He made one himself and used it to look at the sky. He saw many things no one had seen before. It was a really exciting time.

I really like this book and recommend it for anyone who would like to read about Galileo.

Planet Mercury, taken by the Messenger space probe. Image courtesy of http://wikipedia.org

Mercury was named for the Roman God, Mercury. He was the fast messenger of the gods. He even had wings on his heels! It is a good name for the planet Mercury because it moves around the sun faster than any other planet. It goes around the sun every 88 days. Even though Mercury goes around the sun very quickly, it spins very slowly on its axis. It takes 58.6 Earth days for Mercury to spin around one time.

Mercury is difficult to study because it is so close to the sun. You can only see it either right before sunrise or right after sunset. The bright light from the sun makes it difficult to study Mercury. It is also very small and hard to see. To help study the planet and take pictures of it, astronomers sent the Mariner 10 to Mercury. It went by Mercury in 1974 and again in 1975 and took many, many pictures as well as measurements. The pictures were sent back to Earth and scientists pieced them together like a giant jigsaw puzzle. Both times Mariner 10 went by Mercury, the same side was facing the sun so these pictures only show half the planet.

Mercury looks kind of like the moon. It has a lot of craters, some of which are up to 800 miles across! Some of these craters have peaks in the middle. There are also wrinkles and large plains on the surface. Its temperature ranges from -292 degrees Fahrenheit and 809 degrees Fahrenheit. Mercury doesn’t have enough gases around it to trap heat from the sun so that’s why Mercury’s temperatures are always swinging so much. With such a thin atmosphere, there is nothing to scatter the rays of the sun. That makes the sky look black all the time, even in the day.

In order to find out even more about Mercury, another unmanned space probe, the Messenger, was sent off in August of 2004. It finally made its first flyby of Mercury in January of 2008. It has already sent back many pictures for scientists to study.

A view of Mars taken by the Hubble space telescope. Image courtesy http://nasa.gov

From Earth, Mars looks like a red dot in the sky, even without a telescope.  Mars was named after the Roman god of war, maybe because it is red like blood.  When astronomers looked at Mars through a telescope, they saw dark lines.  In 1877, Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli made a map of these dark lines.  He called them “canali.”  This is a word for a natural path made by water, but some people saw the word and thought he saw canals.  Canals are made by people.  Some people thought that if there were canals on Mars, there must be life.  We don’t know how these features formed.  Maybe it was by water, but there is no water on Mars now except a little bit frozen at the poles.

Mars is the fourth planet from the sun.  It is a little smaller than Earth but takes about as much time to rotate on its axis as Earth.  This means that one day on Mars is about the same as one day on Earth.  It takes Mars about two years to go around the sun.

In 1609, Johannes Kepler studied Mars and thought it moved in a strange way across the sky.  Others of this time thought planets went in a perfect circle around the sun.  He proved that Mars does not travel this way.  In fact, all the planets travel in an elliptical pattern, but Mars’ orbit is more elliptical than most.

The view from Spirit's hazard avoidance camera sent back February 24, 2009. Image courtesy http://nasa.gov

Because Mars is relatively close and has a thin atmosphere, it has been heavily studied both from Earth and from space.  It currently has three satellites orbiting and studying the planet, the most of any planet other than Earth.  Its surface has many landers from various missions, some working and some out of service.  Spirit and Opportunity, twin rovers on opposite sides of the planet, are currently sending information about the Martian surface back to scientists.

He said, “It was one of the quiet, colorful afternoons of sheer beauty which we have in October in New England, and as I looked toward the fields at the east, I imagined how wonderful it would be to make some device which had even the possibility of ascending to Mars, and how it would look on a small scale, if sent up from the meadow at my feet.”

He was trying to make a rocket because a airplane couldn’t fly without gravity.  He took apart Chinese fireworks. They were powered by gunpowder, but gunpowder wouldn’t work for the rocket, because the rocket needed a strong steady push to keep it going. Finally he decided to use liquid oxygen and hydrogen. But fuel was hard to get because liquid oxygen had to be stored at -297′ F and hydrogen at -423′ F.

His first successful rocket was 10 1/2 feet tall and weighed 10 pounds. It was launched in 1926. His assistant lit the fuel with a blow torch. It went 41 feet high. The first flight lasted only 2.5 seconds but the space age had begun. He died in 1945 and never sent a rocket to space but but the Russian satellite Sputnik in 1957 and the American satellite Explorer in 1958 were descendants of Goddard’s rocket.

Here is how to make a a model liquid fueled rocket:You need :

• An empty wine bottle and cork
• baking soda
• tissue paper
• vinegar

What you do:

1. You take the wine bottle and put a half cup of vinegar in it.
2. Then you take it outside roll up a teaspoon of baking soda in the tissue paper.
3. Drop the packet of baking soda in the bottle and quickly stick in the cork; wait awhile;  the cork will fly through the air.

Submitted by The Swordmaster

Making solar cookies with my brother and sister while learning about the sun.

To make your own edible model of the sun, all you need are a few basic ingredients and a good cookie recipe to start with.  Any recipe will do fine, just remember that you will have to frost it.  A simple recipe for sugar cookies and butter frosting may be found at the end of this entry.

Once you have cooled your cookies and frosted them, you are ready to make your own solar cookies!  Assemble the following ingredients:

1. Mini M&M’s
2. Twizzlers
3. Red & yellow colored sugar

The surface of the sun has a granular appearance because of temperature differences.  Sprinkle the colored sugar on top of your frosting to show this on your cookies.

Next, place the dark M&Ms in pairs on your solar cookie to represent sunspots.

Then take the Twizzlers and cut them to size.  Bend them into small arcs and press both ends into the frosting to represent solar prominences erupting from the surface of the sun.

Finally, enjoy your solar cookies!

My brother's finished solar cookie. Looks goo0od!

(Solar) Sugar Cookies

• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup margarine softened
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 egg unbeaten
• 2 teaspoons lemon extract or 1 1/2 teaspoons almond extract
• 1/2 teaspoons nutmeg
• 2 cups flour
• 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

Cream margarine and sugar.  Add next five ingredients and mix thoroughly.  Add flour and baking soda.  Roll dough and flatten.  Bake on ungreased cookie sheet 12 to 15  minutes. Heat oven to 350 degrees.

Next you will need some icing to hold the decorations on your model.  This recipe makes a LOT of frosting because it is meant for cakes.  You can either make lots of cookies, or you may want to halve the recipe.

Butter Frosting

• 3/4 cup butter softened
• 9 cups powdered sugar
• 1/4 cup milk
• 2 teaspoons vanilla

In a very large mixing bowl beat butter until smooth.  Gradually add 2 cups of the powdered sugar beating well.  Slowly beat in the 1/4 cup milk and vanilla.  Gradually beat in remaining powdered sugar.  Beat in enough additional milk to reach spreading consistency.  A few drops of yellow food coloring will make your icing look more like the surface of the sun.

An image of Jupiter, captured by the Cassini space probe. Image courtesy http://nasa.gov

Past Mars and the asteroid belt is our solar system’s largest planet: Jupiter.  It has two and a half times the mass of all other planets in the solar system combined!  It can even be seen from Earth.  In fact, only the sun, moon and Venus are brighter. It was known by ancient astronomers and was involved in the religions and myths of many cultures.  It was named after the Roman god of sky and thunder.  He was also the king of the Roman gods.

Jupiter is the first of four gas giants.  It has a thick atmosphere.  Very little sunlight gets through its clouds.  Scientists believe there is an ocean made of liquid hydrogen which may be up to 10,000 miles deep.  The atmosphere is made of hydrogen and a little bit of helium.  Clouds move in swirling bands around Jupiter very fast, causing many great storms.

Jupiter has a large red spot which is a raging storm that has been going on for many years.  The discovery of the Great Red Spot is usually attributed to Giovanni Cassini due to a sketch in 1672.  That means this storm is over 330 years old!  Jupiter has many other spots which are also large storms, but none as big as the Great Red Spot.

Jupiter has at least 63 moons.  The four largest can be seen from Earth with a telescope.  These moons were very important in Galileo’s study of the solar system.  By watching their movement, he realized that the moons were going around Jupiter.  Although Nicolaus Copernicus had already suggested that the planets went around the sun rather than Earth, most people of Galileo’s day still believed the Earth was the center of the universe.  By noticing that the moons went around Jupiter, Galileo realized that not everything in the universe went around the Earth.

These are the phases of Venus. Image courtesy http://wikipedia.org

Venus is the brightest thing in the sky other than the sun and the moon.  Sometimes you can even see it before the sun goes down.  Because of this, it is also known as the evening star or the morning star.  In fact, people used to think that Venus was two separate, very bright stars.  Pythagoras, a Greek philosopher and mathematician, was supposedly the first person to realize that Venus was actually one planet rather than two stars.

Venus was named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty.  I think it was named after this goddess because it is very bright and pretty.  Venus shines so brightly because it is the second closest planet to the sun.  It is surrounded by very thick clouds which reflect a lot of sunlight.

These clouds also make it very difficult to study Venus.  Galileo was the first person to see Venus through a telescope way back in the 1600s, but he couldn’t see the surface.  Most telescopes we have cannot see through Venus’ thick clouds.

This is Venus' surface. Image courtesy http://wikipedia.org

In order to study Venus’s surface, we need to use radio telescopes.  These send radar through the clouds and back to earth for scientists to study.  On August 10, 1990, the space probe Magellan went into orbit around Venus and circled until October 12, 1994.  It gave us many maps of Venus by sending radio signals through the thick atmosphere and back to earth.

Venus’ surface looks a lot like our deserts mixed with some vocanos and LOTS of lava.  In fact, most of Venus’ surface has been shaped by volcanic activity, with lava rivers, lave hills and lava plains.

It takes Venus 225 Earth days to go around the sun one time.  But it takes Venus 243 Earth days to rotate on its axis one time, which means that a day on Venus is longer than a year!  Venus rotates on its axis opposite of most planets in the solar system.  Earth rotates from west to east while Venus rotates from east to west.

Venus’ thick clouds also trap a lot of heat, making temperatures on Venus reach as high as 900 degrees Fahrenheit.  As far as we know, there is no liquid water on Venus.  There may have been some, but it has all evaporated.  There is some water vapor in the clouds mixed with sulfur dioxide, which makes sulfuric acid.  This is poisonous to us.  There is also a lot of carbon dioxide.  This thick atmosphere is very heavy, making the air pressure there 90 times greater than on Earth.

Some probes have tried to land on Venus but the pressure is too great, and they only last a couple of hours.

Saturn's size in comparison to Earth. Image courtesy http://nasa.gov

Saturn is named for the Roman god Saturnus which is also where the word Saturday came from.  He was the Roman god of agriculture, justice and strength.  He was depicted as having a sickle in his left hand and a bundle of wheat in his right hand.  The sickle is where the symbol for Saturn comes from.

Saturn is the furthest planet from the sun that we can still see without a telescope.  In 1610, Galileo was the first person to look at Saturn through a telescope.  It looked to him like Saturn had ears.  Christian Huygens was the first person to see what these “ears” were.  Using a better telescope in 1656, he saw that Saturn had rings.  Saturn was the first planet found to have rings.  Now we know that these rings are made of rocks, chunks of ice and dust particles.

Saturn, along with Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune, is known as a gas giant.  It is made up mostly of hydrogen and helium, and scientists believe that there are areas where the gases turn to liquid because of atmospheric pressure.  The planet is not very dense.  In fact, scientists think that if we had an ocean big enough, Saturn would even float!

Northern clouds of Titan, image courtesy http://nasa.gov

Saturn has at least 18 moons but only nine of them can be seen with a telescope from Earth.  The others were discovered by the Voyager space probes.  Saturn’s largest moon is Titan.  It is the second largest moon in the solar system, and is even bigger than the planet Mercury.  It is the only moon in our solar system that has clouds and a thick atmosphere.

The most recent space probe to visit Saturn was Cassini, part of a joint mission between NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) and ESA (European Space Agency) which got to Saturn in 2004.  It released the Huygen space probe which went to Titan.  It took pictures, measurements and landed on Titan.  It survived a few hours on Titan’s surface and sent back pictures that looked like Earth.  You can learn more about this amazing moon by watching NASA’s video Saturn Moons Explorer, Titan.