THE MILKY WAY: OUR GALAXY

 

 

OBJECTIVES:

    Students will be able to define: galaxy; light year; sunspots; and solar system.

    Students will be able to give a brief description of the Milky Way Galaxy.

    Students will be able to name the planets in order from the sun.

 

RELATION TO MISSOURI FRAMEWORKS:

    5-8 Our solar system is part of the Milky Way Galaxy, one of many galaxies in    

           the universe.

    5-8 Nine planets, their moons, comets, asteroids, and meteorites orbit the sun.

 

CONTEXT:

    Grade Level 4-6

    Group of 20-25 for StarLab presentation.

 

PREREQUISITE:

        Students should have some knowledge of the solar system and how many

      planets it contains.         Assignment due today: Students should define galaxy, sunspots, light year,      

      and solar system.

        Prior practice naming the planets in order from the sun. (yesterday’s assignment)

 

 

     StarLab Portable Planetarium

     Solar System Cylinder

     Arrow Pointer

 

PROCEDURE:

1.      Enter the Planetarium.

2.      Turn on the Solar System Cylinder after all students are seated and ready.

3.      Ask: What is a galaxy?

4.      Ask: What is our galaxy?

5.      Use arrow to show the Milky Way.

6.      Tell about the Milky Way Galaxy.

       There are approximately 30 billion galaxies in the known universe.

       The largest ones are made up of one trillion stars or more.

       The smallest ones are made up of about 10 million stars.

       The Milky Way contains about 200 billion stars.

       Would it be considered a small, medium, or large galaxy?

       As I said, the Milky Way has about 200 billion stars—that’s about the total number of Oreo cookies that have ever been baked.

 

7.      Say: Name one very important star in the Milky Way Galaxy.(sun)

The sun is located about 24,000 light years from the center of the galaxy.

Ask a particular student: Can you tell me what a light year is?

Tell the students: One light year equals 6 trillion miles.

 

8.      Say: In the city the Milky Way is hard to see because the lights reflect from

the sky—this prevents the stars from shining as brightly.

But if you go out in the country, away from the city lights, on a clear night you can see it—a band of white running across the sky.

 

9.   To describe the Milky Way say: The Milky Way is like an enormous spinning pancake. But because we live inside the pancake, when we look out, we see the edge of the pancake as a strip of stars.  The nearby stars are close enough so that they look as though they are spread all over the sky and don’t seem to be in the pancake, but they really are.

    

10. Call on an individual student to tell what the solar system is.

Point to the sun and ask: What is this?

Point to the sunspots and ask: What are these? Call on a particular student to  define sunspots.

 

11.  Say: Yesterday you were given an assignment to learn to name the planets  in order from the sun. Ask: How many planets are in our solar system? (9)

           

12.  Ask: What are some other things that make up our solar system? (call on

       individual student) moons, comets, asteroids, meteorites.

 

13.  Point to the sun and say: Here is the sun.  When I point to a planet I want all of you to name it. (go in order from the sun). Briefly discuss some or all of 

the planets.

Mercury

Venus

Earth

Mars

Jupiter

Saturn

Uranus

Neptune

Pluto

 

14.  Can you remember the sentence I told you to help you remember the            

         (My very educated mom just served us nine pizzas)

 

15.  Ask: Are all these planets we just named located in the Milky Way Galaxy?       

         Do you think our Solar System is right in the center of the Milky Way?         

         Actually, it’s away from the center—kind of like away from the city—in the

  Some galaxies are in a spiral shape, some are elliptical (oval),

         and some are an irregular shape. The M.W. is spiral.

 

16.  Say: In just a minute we are going to quietly exit the planetarium and go to

         the classroom. I will be giving you an activity sheet entitled “How Big Is 

         Big?”. I would like you to complete it.  I will also give you a long

         rectangular  sheet of  drawing paper.  I want you to draw and label

         the planets and the sun, on one side.  On the other side I want you to

         draw the Milky Way Galaxy the way it looks to you after looking at it in the      

         planetarium.

 

17.  Have the students carefully exit the planetarium.

 

 EXTENSIONS AND/OR ADAPTATIONS:  A few minutes will be given tomorrow         for students to get with a partner and name the planets in order.  Hand out activity 

sheet and drawing paper following the presentation of the lesson.

 

CONTENT BACKGROUND:

      The Milky Way is a gravitationally bound collection of roughly 200 billion stars.  Our sun is one of these stars and is located approximately 24,000 light years from the center of the Milky Way.  Nicolas Copernicus discovered that the Earth is not in the center of the solar system and Shapley found that the solar system is not the center of the galaxy.  We are out in the “suburbs” ľ of the way between the center and the edge of the galaxy’s disc.  Galaxies are basically 3 different shapes.  They may be elliptical, spiral, or irregular.  The Milky Way is an irregular shape. Vocabulary: light year-the distance that light travels in one year; solar system-the sun, together with a group of planets and other celestial bodies that revolve around the sun; sunspot-a dark spot on the surface of the sun; galaxy-a large assembly of stars, gas, and dust held together by gravity.

           

APPENDIX:  Activity Sheet

 

WEB SITES:

Internet Explorer: Search: Milky Way Galaxy: Scroll & Click on MSN Encarta.

http://www.letsfindout.com/subjects/space/galaxy.html

http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/html/milky_way.html