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Gain access to the NASA database on the Internet (you type in http://www.yahoo.com/Science/Space followed by RETURN and when it appears you CLICK on NASA). Find images of the planets (often several views), articles on the physical nature and conditions on the surface of each planet, comets and asteroids, the Solar System and the search for planets around other stars. Information on the planets in our Solar System and other astronomical data is available from http://www.ex.ac.uk/public_html/nineplanets/nineplanets.html, the majority of this data is now available as a link on the Bradford Nuffield home page at http://www.telescope.org/nuffield and the NASA web pages can be accessed through http://spacelink.msfc.nasa.gov.
Pupils could find information and work on the following:-
1. An article describing the geographical conditions on a planet
using fact sheets from "The
Planets" project or, better, the Internet.
2. The History of gravitational theory (Copernicus, Galileo, Brahe, Kepler, Newton and Einstein).
3. A survey on the moons of the planets in the Solar System
4. The Sun (what it burns, its age, life span, sun spots, etc)
5. An article on comets (e.g. Halley's, Shoemaker-Levy etc.)
6. Sketch a view from a planet
7. Make a poster of "The Planets".
Pupil Activity - Telescope Image Request
Before deciding which planet to request, use the SKYGLOBE package to check that the planet will be visible from the U.K. during the hours of darkness (i.e. the Sun must be 15 degrees below the horizon when the planet is 20 degrees above the horizon). When submitting a job to the Robotic Telescope, give the name of the object as the name of the planet e.g. Saturn.
Pupils could obtain images of:-
a Mars (for polar caps).
b Jupiter (with interesting bands, spots and many moons).
c Saturn (with bands on the surface of the planet, spectacular
rings, many moons and a series
of images could prove worthwhile, the rings will be hard to
see in 1995, why?)
d Mercury and Venus (show phases, though these planets are small).
e Other planets, can you spot any moons?
