Author: mayrazamudio

In the summer of 1976, two Viking spacecraft entered orbit around Mars. Two landers detached, descended, and touched down successfully. DIGITAL EFFECT: Land On MarsApproach Mars, and then fade the scene off to land on Mars, with a Martian panorama visible. VISUAL 16 (still): Viking Lander Soon, we saw the first photographs ever taken of […]

DIGITAL EFFECT: Go To Mars Lift off Earth, and move away to view Earth from space. Introduce a slow orbital motion. DIGITAL EFFECT: Fly to Mars Move to Mars in two stages. In the first stage, turn towards Mars, and approach Mars so it appears as an appreciable dot. In the second stage move close […]

VISUAL 5 (still): Lowell Sharp-eyed observers with telescopes discovered the length of a Martian day is 24 hours and 37 minutes — not much more than one Earth day. They measured the planet’s smaller size, a little more than half the diameter of Earth. They noticed that many of Mars’ mysterious markings seem to darken […]

We have discovered Mars just as it was when it was first discovered: using our unaided eyes. Just about 400 years ago, Galileo discovered a new way of looking at Mars: through a telescope. DIGITAL EFFECT: Mars Through TelescopeZoom up a “telescopic” view of Mars, attached to Mars, in an “eyepiece ring.” VISUAL 2 (optional […]

Could one of these points of light do something different? We have been watching for many minutes now, and we know all the points of light in the sky appear to turn very slowly throughout the night. But there isn’t much happening so far, and no one star stands out yet. Maybe we should go […]

Can we discover Mars right now? Everybody, please look all around the night sky, and let’s see how many orange-red points of light we can find. Please let me know when you have found an orange to red point of light, so we can point it out to everybody. Turn up reading lights partially; when […]

People all over the world have watched the Moon and have come up with ideas about why the Moon changes its shape. Here’s one story that comes from the Euahlayi (you-ah-LAY-ee), one of the many tribes that were the first people of Australia: VISUAL 1 (still): Full Moon Put up a large still image graphic […]

We’re going on a pretend spaceship ride to the Moon just like Apollo astronauts did. But before we go to the Moon, let’s learn a little bit about the Moon. One of the great things about a planetarium is that we can make our pretend sky look like it is any time of the day […]

(This part makes an excellent interdisciplinary project with school art programs.) As a memento of your visit to northern lights we have all the tools you need to make a chalk sketch of your impression of the aurora borealis. I’ll give you black paper for the night sky.  What chalk colors should we use?  VISUAL […]

Whether you see the northern lights depends on many factors. Being far to the north makes northern lights viewing more likely, except in the summer. But if the Sun becomes very active, the solar wind can be strong enough to cause northern lights to occur surprisingly farther south than normal—visible from southern United States and […]