Distance Learning Module: Stars and Sun
For our younger learners: get to know the stars, and one very special star in particular!
Look outside tonight.
How many stars can you see?
What are they made of?
STARS are gigantic balls of GAS located in OUTER SPACE
If you’ve ever seen a pot of boiling water, you have seen water rising above the pot in the form of a gas, which we call water vapor
The star’s GRAVITY holds the gas together in the shape of a ball.
Stars are very big and very hot! But they are so far away from us in space that they look small in the sky.
Activity: Star Temperatures
Use crayons or colored pencils to color FOUR stars.
BLUE stars are the hottest
YELLOW-WHITE stars are a bit cooler…
ORANGE stars are a bit cooler still…
and RED stars are the coolest
Even a “cool” star is very hot to us—a red star is over 5 thousand degrees Farenheit!
With an adult’s help, cut out your four stars. Can you put them in order from coolest to hottest?
Our SUN is a star.
It is located in space about 93 million miles (150 million kilometers) away from Earth, the planet where we live.
That is very far…but it’s close enough that the sun’s light shines onto the Earth and gives us DAYTIME.
It is very important not to look directly at the Sun!
The Sun is so bright that it will hurt our eyes unless we view it with the proper equipment.
Scientists took this special photograph of the Sun in 1973 from the Skylab space station.
During the DAYTIME, the Sun is so bright that we cannot see any other stars in the sky. But at night…
Above: night Sky at Turquoise Lake, Leadville, Colorado; credit: Sayamindu Dasgupta, Cambridge, MA
…we face away from the Sun and can see MANY stars in the sky!
TELESCOPES help us to see far-away objects by making them appear closer
Above: Astronomical telescope, credit: Encyclopedia Britannica
Below: Star cluster of stars called NGC 1866, captured with NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescopes’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3)
…but we can also see stars in the night sky with our own eyes!
Activity: Practice Stargazing
A constellation is a group of stars that forms a pattern when seen from Earth.
Have an adult help you print and cut out the cards below. Connect the dots in order to complete the constellations.
Optional:
Use crayons, colored pencils, glitter, and other craft supplies around your home to decorate a used paper towel roll. Use your homemade “telescope” to view the constellation cards from different distances.
What else can you see through your telescope? Try looking at objects through the widow or inside your home.
Remember never to look directly at the Sun!
Activity: Sun Paper
Requires adult assistance—mess potential!
