For our first class, I introduced Gwendolyn to the Solar System. We discussed the planets one by one, and looked at images from different missions to the planets. We talked a bit about the distance scale, and used Bobby's model (in the Batt School corridor) to illustrate the vast relative distances between the planets and the Sun.

Today Bobby and I perused the Astronomy Picture of the Day website and downloaded images of nebulae (as always.. his favorite astronomical object), but we also looked at galaxies (we'll cover them at some point) and the Northern lights. With regard to the latter, I took the opportunity to talk a little bit about the Earth's magnetic field and how it channels particles from the Sun along its field lines that we witness as the Aurora Borealis.

Bobby and I watched an amazing video that came out recently on a couple of guys who built a model Solar System in the Nevada desert. They were able to go one further than we did, since they constructed the model not only scaled to distance but also to size. As an example, if the Earth were a marble, the Sun would be one-and-a-half yards across... So far so good, but we would then have to place Neptune about seven miles from the Sun for the scale to hold!! On our scale (the corridor at the Batt school, the inner planets are no bigger than specks of dust). We then continued adding to our Solar System by placing the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. And as always, we concluded class by browsing through the Astronomy Picture of the Day archives for images of nebulae that Bobby can print out and tape to his wall.

In past lessons, we have touched upon the scale of things - and how important it is for an accurate representation of the real world that when we miniaturize or enlarge something that it is done to scale. Maps are a good example. With our Solar System, the relative sizes and distances are often misrepresented in books. So Bobby and I prepared a model of the Solar System to illustrate the relative distances of the planets by taping pictures of the Sun and the planets to the walls of the corridor at the school and placing them at the calculated distances, using the distance from the Earth to the Sun as 1 foot.

We started today's class by talking about eclipses, since we've just had a lunar eclipse a few days ago. We discussed the difference between lunar eclipses and solar eclipses. I pulled up an image of the Space Station crossing in front of the disk of the Sun, and that triggered a torrent of salient questions from Bobby - we talked about zero-gravity environments, how does one eat and sleep in space, what is the Space Station used for, and so on. We finished class with Bobby's favorites, nebulae, and printed some out for him to tape to his wall.

How nice to see Bobby on Skype! We started by talking about Sunday's upcoming lunar eclipse - I hope totality occurs early enough so Bobby gets to see it before bedtime (I also hope the skies stay clear). We next went through the Archive of the website 'Astronomy Picture of the Day' and I pulled up various images of nebulae (Bobby's favorite!) and other astronomical images and we talked about them. He also showed me his rock collection, so we'll be planning a session on geology at some point.

Bobby was absent today.

Today, Bobby and I managed to print out images of each planet in the Solar System, in addition to the Sun and Pluto. As we identified the images we wanted to save of each planet, we discussed their characteristics. We printed two sets of copies: one is for Bobby to take home, and the other set we taped to the wall in Bobby's room in numerical order from the Sun. Next step: Look at the relative scale, by setting the distance from the Earth to the Sun in the 'model' Solar System to equal, say, one yard.

Bobby and I started working on a scaled-down model of our Solar System. I began class by asking Bobby if he works with models of anything, and he eagerly told me about his car collection. I explained the concept of 'scale' to him, and how all dimensions of the original need to be scaled down by the same proportion, otherwise the model will be nothing like the original. We then proceeded to start collecting online images of the Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars (but were unable to print them today) that will be used when we assemble our model that will illustrate the relative distances between the planets.

Bobby expressed a keen interest in 'stellar nebulae', and so we talked about the two main types of nebulae (star-forming and planetary). We printed two images of nebulae that particularly caught Bobby's eye, and he very much wanted to tape them to the wall. He then remembered that back in first grade, he had worked on a project that showed the evolution of a sun-like star and he eagerly dug it out from his pile of papers to show me! It was a great project, and I look forward to working on similar projects with Bobby in the schoolyear to come.