Category: Friday’s Factoid

Friday’s Factoid 26 (by Titus)

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When a star explodes it is called a supernova. Supernovas leave behind nebulae. A nebula is gas and dust floating in space. It is like a foot print left by the exploded star. Almost 1000 years ago some Chinese astronomers recorded a supernova that was so bright it could be seen in the day. Then when there were telescopes they used the charts from the Chinese astronomers and found the Crab Nebula left by the exploded star (Titus, 9).
The Crab Nebula
The Crab Nebula

Teacher’s Two-Cents (by Mom)
I’m super excited about our topic of study for the next few weeks. Introduced in our text (Apologia’s “Exploring Creation with Astronomy,” lesson 13), and beautifully illustrated in one of our favorite books, “Adam and His Kin” by Ruth Beechick, I’ve spent the year digging deeper into the subject of the Gospel in the Stars. The 3 texts I’ve been studying are Joseph Seiss’s “The Gospel in the Stars,” E.W. Bullinger’s “The Witness of the Stars,” and thanks to a great recommendation from a blog reader, Ken Fleming’s “God’s Voice in the Stars.” All of these sources explore the constellations of the Zodiac as the ancient Hebrews would have viewed them before their meanings became corrupted by pagan astrology. Next week we will dive right into the first 4 signs and the theme of Christ as “Suffering Savior delivering man from the penalty of sin.” The next week we will see Christ as the “Glorified Blesser delivering man from the power of sin” and finally onto Christ as “Reigning Judge delivering man from the presence of sin (Fleming, 27).”

Friday’s Factoid 25 (by Titus, Joel and Nate)

This week we learned about galaxies like the Milky Way. The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy. Only spiral galaxies can support life and only on the outer arms. That is where our solar system is (Titus, 9 1/4).

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We learned about the different shapes of galaxies. We made our own galaxies with glitter and glue. Mine was a spiral galaxy and so was Ti’s. Nate’s was a barred spiral galaxy and Sam’s was an irregular galaxy. There are also elliptical galaxies but nobody made one of those (Joel, 7 1/20.
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We made Sombrero Galaxies out of tortillas and beans and sour cream and cheese. Our friend Sei made one, too. Then we rolled them into burritos and ate them (Nate, almost 6!).

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Teacher’s Two-Cents (by Mom)
Great place for a messy project.
Great place for a messy project.

With a house full of boys I don’t have a whole lot of glitter in my life. So when I planned this galaxy project I thought we were safe doing it outside on the picnic table. All of you glitter veterans out there are probably laughing at my ignorance. That stuff is a true scientific wonder. The makers of germ warfare should use it as a model. I’ve never seen anything spread so quickly or so thoroughly onto and into every square inch of our persons and household. And showering doesn’t help either. It even showed up on the Sombrero Galaxies we made later. One of our neighbors joined us for that project. The boys taught their friend, Sei, all about galaxies and Sei’s mom gave them their Japanese lesson in return. A great trade off, I think. I started out teaching the boys German with plans to move onto Latin, because that’s what I knew. But the Lord moved us all onto an island in the middle of the Pacific and now they are learning Hawaiian and Japanese instead, two languages I know nothing about. I have no idea how God is planning on using these languages in their future but I’m sure He has something in mind! Oh, and by the time Sei and his mom left they had glitter on them, too.

Friday’s Factoid 24 (by Titus and Joel)

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When the moon is new and dark and there are no clouds you can see about 3000 stars in the sky but with a little telescope you can see about 100,000. The brightest star we can see is Sirius. Last night we saw it from our lanai. Jupiter was brighter but it is not a star (Joel, 7 1/2).
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The sky is like an umbrella. The North Star is called Polaris and it is the middle of the umbrella. It never moves but all the other stars turn around it. The Big Dipper points to Polaris so you can always know where it is (Titus, 9).

Thanks AstroBob for the great illustration!
Thanks AstroBob for the great illustration!