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A projected Astronomy Room is used to introduce constellations in "Sun, Moon and Stars."
For Grades K-2
To arrange a visit for your school group, please call (585) 697-1942.
Observe the sun's daily path across the sky and predict sunset. Look at simple sketches of key constellations, then find and point to them in the sky (inferring). Classify bright and faint stars; note shapes of prominent constellations; count their brightest stars. Discover how planets change positions from year to year, but constellations do not (identifying variables). On an imaginary trip to the moon, compare and contrast daytime on the moon with daytime on Earth.
NYS Learning Standards: ELA1; MST3, MST4PE(1); MST6(2)
Download the script for a typical springtime presentation here (172k PDF)------------------------------------------------------------------------ Outline of the ProgramAs
soon as the children are seated, the show presenter introduces
him/herself, the Star Theater, and the Carl Zeiss star projector;
explains that the Planetarium can make you feel as if you're traveling
to many different places. We can use the Planetarium to learn about
things we can see in the sky.
Music and the recorded voice of
our narrator welcome the audience to the Astronomy Room, a pleasant
classroom created on the dome by special effects projectors.
Our
first topic is the sun. We ask, "Have you ever noticed that the sun is
in different places in the sky at different times?" We explain that the
sun is in the east in the morning, in the south about noontime, and in
the west in the afternoon. The words "east," "south" and "west" appear
on the "blackboard" at the front of the Astronomy Room as they are
explained.
Then the Astronomy Room fades away to reveal a
clear blue morning sky. Children find and point to the sun and to the
lighted letters "E", "S" and "W" that mark east, south and west on the
Planetarium horizon. We watch the sun travel across the Planetarium sky
to its afternoon position.
Just as the sun is about to set,
clouds and an unexpected rain shower (created with sound effects) send
us back "indoors," into the Astronomy Room.
While we wait for
the sky outside to clear, We hear about the stars: some stars are
bright, others are faint. She then introduces a few important stars or
star groups of the season, each illustrated with drawings on the
"blackboard." These sketches, which are models of the real
constellations, will help us find the constellations when we go
outside. Different stars and constellations will be featured depending
on the season of your visit to the Planetarium:
Winter: Orion, Sirius, Taurus
Spring: The Big Dipper, Arcturus, Spica, Leo
Sunshine
in the west window of the Astronomy Room indicates that the sky is
clearing. We go back "outside" and quietly watch the changing colors of
sunset.
After the stars come out, we encourage the children to
find and point to each of the key stars or star groups we talked about
in the Astronomy Room. Only after the children have had a chance to
find the stars in question does the show presenter point them out with
the "green arrow" (a projecting pointer). The last step with each star
group is to superimpose an outline picture, representing a mythological
figure, on the stars.
Next, we watch the star groups we have
learned to see if they move during the night (they do). However, we see
that the North Star always stays in the same place in the sky.
Why
do the stars seem to move across the sky? To find out, we return to the
Astronomy Room, where a turning Earth globe shows how we are always
moving. The stars only seem to move. The turning of the Earth also
causes day and night.
Next, we look at a picture of the moon,
noticing the dark patches on its surface. (Some people think the dark
patches look like the face of "the man in the moon," but we know
there's not really a man's face up there!). Further pictures show that
on different nights, the moon seems to have different shapes. At this
developmental level, we do not go into the explanation for the phases
of the moon.
We go back "outside" once again to see what the
sky looks like when the moon is up. The moon's bright light is
beautiful, but it makes the faint stars hard to see. We fade the moon
out (something we can do only in a planetarium) and, for the first
time, we see the starry sky with no other lights—not even the faint
bluish glow of distant city lights, which has been present up till now.
We notice that many faint stars can be seen in a very dark sky.
Kate explains that all the stars in the night sky are hot balls of
fiery gases, like our sun. But those other suns are so far away that
they look like tiny lights in the sky.
Our imagination then
takes us out into space, all the way to the moon. After noticing rocks,
mountains and craters on the moon's surface, we see Earth and the sun
in the sky.
The show concludes with an imaginary return to
Earth. We land just in time to watch the stars fade as the eastern sky
brightens, heralding the rising of the sun and the beginning of a new
day. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Recommended BooksH.
A. Rey, Find the Constellations (Houghton Mifflin, rev. 1988).
Paperback picture book, about $10. Written and illustrated by the
author of the Curious George books, this very practical guide starts
right at the beginning, showing how you can connect stars to make
imaginary pictures in the sky. The book guides you through major star
groups of each season, then concludes with a few pages on the planets
and space travel and an excellent index.
I. M. Levitt and Roy
K. Marshall, Star Maps for Beginners (Fireside/Simon & Schuster,
rev. 1992). Paperback, illustrated, about $10. A bit more technical
than Rey's book, but a good low-cost source of information on
constellation mythology.
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