Monday
Monday: The Sun Seems to Move
Rocket drags a chair to the back porch step and plants a flag made from a pencil and paper. "The Sky Deck is open."
Raven sits on the step with a notebook. "What do you notice about the Sun right now?"
"It is over the garage," Rocket says. "This morning it was over the fence. It moves."
Nova hovers beside the railing, her light dimmed to a soft glow. "Does it?" she asks. "Or does something else move?"
Rocket frowns. "The ground is not moving. I would feel it."
"Would you?" Raven asks. "On a smooth train, you feel still too. The scenery slides past."
Nova hums. "Watch the shadows this week. Measure. Then decide what is really turning."
Welcome to the Sky Deck
This course turns a window, a porch step or a yard corner into the Sky Deck. That is your home Earth and space lab.
You need only things a family already has. Think of a lamp or flashlight, two balls, paper, a pencil, string and a ruler.
You will keep a Sky Log in the journal blocks. Write what you saw, what you measured and what each model showed.
Every fact this week comes from a page at NASA or in OpenStax Astronomy. You will read some of those pages yourself.
What everyone sees
Lie back in an open field at night. You will see stars rising on the eastern horizon, just as the Sun and Moon do.
They move across the dome of the sky and set on the western horizon. The horizon is where the sky meets the ground.
The point directly above your head is called the zenith. From a flat place, the horizon looks like a circle around you.
Our senses suggest that Earth is the center and the heavens turn around us. OpenStax Astronomy says that view happens to be wrong.
Today we know it is not the sky that turns as night and day proceed. It is the planet we live on.
| Word | What it means | At the Sky Deck |
|---|---|---|
| Horizon | Where the sky appears to meet the ground | the fence line or rooftops |
| Zenith | The point directly overhead | straight up from the porch step |
| East | The direction Earth turns toward; where the Sun rises | the side where morning light arrives |
| West | The opposite of east; where the Sun sets | the side where the evening glow fades |
- Read the question.
- Tap your answer.
| Statement | True or false? |
|---|---|
| The Sun appears to rise in the east and set in the west. | ? |
| The horizon is the point directly overhead. | ? |
| Our senses suggest that the sky turns around us. | ? |
| The sky really does turn around a still Earth. | ? |
Stand in one spot you can find again. Mark it with chalk, a stone or a piece of tape.
Name three things along your horizon, like a roof, a tree and a pole. Write them left to right.
The Sun is never looked at directly, with or without glasses, a camera or a phone. Sunset position is read from the glow and the shadows.
The facts this week come from NASA at science.nasa.gov and nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov, and from OpenStax Astronomy at openstax.org.
Good start. Tomorrow you learn what an axis is and why east is the direction Earth turns toward.