Week 6 Space

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Week 6


How the phases of the moon occur?

The reason we have moon phases is where the sunlight is hitting the moon. 



What causes a lunar eclipse?

A lunar eclipse is when you cannot see the moon, when the sun moon and earth perfectly line up and the moon is blocked out. 

Solar Eclipse

When the sun is blocked out, when we cannot see the sun. When the earth sun and moon all line up in orbit and we cannot see the sun. 

What causes the seasons?

The tilt of the earth is what causes the seasons. The orbit of the earth is almost a perfect circle. The earth is never at some point closest to the sun. We do NOT have summer because the earth is closest to the sun. When the northern hemisphere is tilted away from the sun.

Tropic of Cancer and Capricorn:

These lines pinpoint the direct sunlight. The longest day of the year is when the sun is directly hitting the tropic of cancer or the summer solstice. 

Spring and Fall Equinox:

When all of the direct sunlight is on the equator which means everyone has an equal amount of light. 


Geocentric:

Earth, centered. Which means earth is in the center of the solar system.

The catholic church mostly wrote the rules and decided that the earth was the center of the universe. 

Heliocentric:

Sun, centered. Which means the sun is the center of the solar system.

Copernicus:

Mathematician who was the first one to say the sun was in the center of the solar system. Catholic church banned him for his findings because they went against the church.

Galileo:

Invented the telescope, findings that were discovered matched Copernicus. Was thrown in house arrest for those ideas. 

Plane of the Ecliptic:

The plane that our planets sit on, sit on a horizontal plane. Pluto is no longer a planet because it is not on the horizontal plane that the rest of the planets are on. 




Tropic of Cancer and Capricorn:

These lines pinpoint the direct sunlight. The longest day of the year is when the sun is directly hitting the tropic of cancer or the summer solstice. 

Spring and Fall Equinox:

When all of the direct sunlight is on the equator which means everyone has an equal amount of light. 














Last semester post 

Lab

1. How do the phases of the moon occur?

I think the phases of the moon occur due to the shadowing from the Earth and the sun. This occurs from the orbit of the moon around the Earth and at different points in the orbit the sun shines on less/more of the moon while the Earth shadows more/less of it.


2. What causes the season?

I think seasons are caused by the orbit of the Earth around the sun, particularly by the axis tilt of the Earth where the Northern or Southern hemispheres are tilted towards or away from the sun. The equator is always tilted towards the sun so seasons aren't as varying when you're closer to the equator. 


3. What causes a lunar eclipse?

I think a lunar eclipse is caused when the sun, moon, and Earth are all in perfect alignment where the Earth's shadow covers the moon, creating a lunar eclipse. 

As a class, we then discussed each of these phenomena through Ted modeling the Earth, sun, and moon for us. We discovered we had. as a class and individually, many misconceptions about the questions we had discussed. The conclusions we came to after our discussion was as follows -


1. How do the phases of the moon occur?

The phases of the moon occur because the moon is lit by the Sun, and when it orbits around Earth, the part that we on Earth see as illuminated changes as it orbits. This is also why a moon cycle takes 28 days as the moon's orbit around the Earth is that length. 


2. What causes the seasons?

The seasons are caused by the axis tilt of the Earth as it orbits the Sun. When the Northern hemisphere is tilted towards the Sun, the North has Summer while the Southern hemisphere would have Winter and vice versa. This also explains why there aren't really seasons near the equator because the sun is always shining there. 


3. What causes a lunar eclipse?

A lunar eclipse is caused when in the moon's orbit of the Earth, it reaches the point where it is in perfect alignment (which doesn't happen every month), in which the moon is shadowed by the Earth and is not reflecting the suns light. This only happens when the three are in near-perfect alignment. 


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