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Post Archives: Watchers of the Skies

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken.

β€”Keats

Great homeschool teaching ideas and little lessons on stars, planets, constellations, comets, meteors, galaxies, space exploration, and other astronomy-related topics from the River Houses Homeschool Network. Add your name to our River Houses homeschool mailing list and get these posts delivered right to your mailbox every week! 😊

🌟 STAR BRIGHT: Regulus for April (And a New Star Calendar)

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For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2019-regulus 😊

We started a new tradition last month β€” a monthly great star β€” and this month we’re continuing and extending it. Please visit our homeschool calendars page and print a copy of our brand new River Houses Star Calendar, a simple one-page introduction to twelve of the great stars of the northern-hemisphere night sky that we will be learning about over the course of the year, and that we hope will become your friends for life:

April is the middle month of Leo Term, and as the new calendar will show you, our great-star-of-the-month for April is Regulus, the brightest star in constellation Leo, the Lion of the Heavens. Its formal designation is Ξ±Β Leonis β€” “alpha of Leo.” Leo and Regulus are high in the southern sky in the early evening this month, passing over to the west as the night goes on.

The constellation Leo, showing the position of its alpha star, Regulus, the “Little King” that is the heart of the lion. The dashed red line is the ecliptic, the path that the sun, moon, and planets follow across the sky. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

If you want to introduce your students to Regulus, you can start with some basic astronomy from your homeschool star atlas (riverhouses.org/books):

“Leo is a zodiacal constellation lying south of Ursa Major [the Great Bear, which includes the Big Dipper]. It is one of the most beautiful of the constellations and is easily recognized; the stars forming the head of the lion are arranged in the shape of a sickle, or reversed ‘?’. Regulus, its brightest star, has a magnitude of 1.3 and is 19th among the 20 brightest stars in the sky. It lies almost exactly on the plane of the ecliptic and is therefore eclipsed by the sun once a year (on about August 23).“ (Celestron Sky Maps, page 6)

The planisphere on the front of your star atlas will help you locate Regulus, and that’s plenty for beginning students β€” your little lesson is done. If you want to get more advanced, the Wikipedia page on Regulus is packed with additional information on everything from astrometrics to cultural history.

The Regulus we see is blue-white, but that Regulus is actually just the primary star (RegulusΒ A) of a quadruple system that is arranged into two pairs: Regulus A and a suspected white dwarf that is detectable only spectroscopically, and Regulus B and C (a pair that is visible as a single star in small telescopes). The B-C pair orbit each other, and together they orbit the primary star Regulus A (and its own tiny companion).

Regulus A (the primary star of the system) and its Regulus B-C neighbors (actually two stars, but appearing single here). (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

The primary star Regulus A is about three times the diameter of our sun and it is spinning so fast that it bulges out at the equator: it takes only 16 hours to complete one rotation, in contrast to about 25 days for the sun. The four-star Regulus system is estimated to be about one billion years old β€” quite old, but less than a quarter of the age of our own solar system. If you’d like to give Regulus an in-person inspection just bring your earth-based spaceship up to the speed of light and you’ll be able to get there in only 79 years. πŸš€

Download and print your own copy of our new River Houses Star Calendar (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us as we visit a different great star each month. 🌟

What stellar observations have you made in your homeschool lately? 😊

❑ Watchers of the skies: Teaching your students to recognize the constellations is one of the simplest and most enduring gifts you can give them. The planisphere on the front of your River Houses star atlas (riverhouses.org/books) will let you dial up the northern hemisphere sky for any night of the year, and the descriptions and maps of each constellation will point out the highlights, including the names and characteristics of the brightest stars. Your general world atlas also has beautiful maps of the whole northern and southern hemisphere night skies on plates 121–122. Why not find a dark-sky spot near you this month and spend some quality homeschool time beneath the starry vault. 🌠 πŸ”­ 🌌 🌟

❑ Alpha and beta and gamma, oh my: Most of the principal stars within each constellation have both old vernacular names β€” Vega, Sirius, Arcturus, and so on β€” as well as more formal scientific designations. The German astronomer Johann Bayer (1572–1625) devised the formal system of star designations that is still in common use today. In Bayer’s system, the stars in each constellation, from brightest to dimmest, are assigned a lowercase letter of the Greek alphabet: Ξ±β€…(alpha, brightest), Ξ²β€…(beta, second brightest), Ξ³β€…(gamma, third brightest), Ξ΄β€…(delta, fourth brightest), and so on. This letter designation is combined with the Latin name of the constellation in its possessive (genitive) form: Lyra becomes Lyrae (“of Lyra”), Canis Major becomes Canis Majoris (“of Canis Major”), and so on. The brightest star in the constellation Lyra (the star Vega) thus becomes Ξ±β€…Lyrae (“alpha of Lyra”), the brightest star in Canis Major (the star Sirius) becomes Ξ±β€…Canis Majoris (“alpha of Canis Major”), and so on, through all 24 Greek letters and all 88 constellations. How bright would you expect, say, the Οƒβ€…(sigma) star of Orion to be? Not very bright β€” it’s far down the alphabet β€” but Οƒβ€…Orionis happens to be the top star of Orion’s sword, so even though it’s not very bright it’s still notable and easy to locate on a dark night.

πŸ”­ WATCHERS OF THE SKIES – April 2019

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For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2019-april-skyβ€Ž 😊

On the first Friday of every month we post educational skywatching notes for the homeschool month ahead. Here’s a monthly northern hemisphere review for April, courtesy of the Hubble Space Telescope’s website:

βž”

And here’s another April review, courtesy of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory:

βž”

For serious homeschool skywatchers, the weekly updates from Sky & Telescope magazine provide a wealth of additional detail. Here’s the latest one:

The best stargazing nights in April will be toward the beginning of the month β€” the moon will be new (and the sky darkest) on the 5th (today). As always, you can track the moon’s phases at the excellent timeanddate.com website.

April is the second month of Leo Term, the third of the four three-month terms that make up the River Houses year. Leo the heavenly lion is up in the east every evening at sunset now, and by ten o’clock he’s high overhead. Be sure to have your students find him and his great alpha star, Regulus β€” about which we’ll have more to say soon.

What celestial observations have you made in your homeschool lately? 😊

❑ Watchers of the skies: Teaching your students to recognize the constellations is one of the simplest and most enduring gifts you can give them. The planisphere on the front of your River Houses star atlas (riverhouses.org/books) will let you dial up the northern hemisphere sky for any night of the year, and the descriptions and maps of each constellation will point out the highlights. Find a dark-sky spot near you this month and spend some quality homeschool time beneath the starry vault. 🌠 πŸ”­ 🌌

🌠 WATCHERS OF THE SKIES: Ashokan Fireball

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For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2019-ashokan-fireball 😊

One of the independent research activities we recommend to homeschoolers is reporting fireballs β€” unusually bright meteors β€” through the online system developed by the American Meteor Society. If you were out early yesterday morning in the northeastern United States, you might have seen a big one that has now been reported by more than 250 people in fourteen states.

Reporting locations for the New York fireball of 28 March 2019. (Image: American Meteor Society.)

Alas, I probably just missed seeing it by about fifteen minutes. πŸ˜– Fireball reporting is a decidedly unpredictable activity, of course, but it’s worth reading about in advance so you’ll know what to look for and what record should one happen to cross your homeschool skies.

The many reports that AMS has received on this particular event indicate that the object traveled from southeast to northwest over the Catskill Mountains of New York. (Send your students to your family atlas to find them.) It was seen by observers as far north as Maine and as far south as West Virginia. AMS has also received one video of the event thus far:

βž”

I’ve reported a couple of fireballs to AMS myself over the years. Keep your eyes on the sky and the next big fireball report might come from you. 🌠

What celestial wonders have you observed in your homeschool this week? 😊

🌷 SPRING is Here! (Astronomically Speaking)

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Today is the March equinox β€” we call it the vernal or spring equinox in the northern hemisphere, but in the southern hemisphere it’s the autumnal or fall equinox. The vernal equinox is the first day of spring (astronomically speaking), just as the autumnal equinox is the first day of fall (astronomically speaking).

❑ Little lessons: “β€˜Vernal’ and ‘autumnal’ are beautiful words. Let’s look them up in our dictionary (riverhouses.org/books).”

Whenever you’re investigating things temporal or calendrical, timeanddate.com is always a good place to start:

The seasons occur because the earth’s axis of daily rotation is not quite perpendicular to the plane of the earth’s annual orbit around the sun (it’s tilted by about 23ΒΊ). The two solstices occur at the points in the annual orbit when the axis is tilted most directly away from the sun (in December, on the first day of northern-hemisphere winter), and most directly toward the sun (in June, on the first day of northern-hemisphere summer). The two equinoxes, in March and September, occur at the points in the annual orbit when the earth’s axis is “sideways” to the sun (so to speak), making the intervals of daylight and darkness equal (or very nearly so).

The two equinoxes (March and September) and the two solstices (June and December) are defined with respect to the earth’s position in its annual orbit around the sun. (Image: timeanddate.com.)

NASA has a fun educational crossword puzzle for kids that’s filled with seasonal and astronomical vocabulary β€” solstices, equinoxes, and more.

Solstices, equinoxes, orbits, and more! A seasonal crossword puzzle for kids. (Image: NASA.)

You can print out your own copy at NASA’s “For Educators” website.

What calendrical events or astronomical apparitions will you be marking in your homeschool this week? 😊

πŸ”­ JOIN A HOMESCHOOL RESEARCH PROJECT for Einstein’s Birthday

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Today is Albert Einstein’s birthday! πŸŽ‰ It’s also Pi Day (3/14), so there couldn’t be a better day to connect your homeschool to a long-running scientific research project that is searching for pulsars in deep space β€” aΒ research project that you and your students (yes, you) can join and contribute to in just aΒ few minutes. (Really!)

The project is called Einstein@Home (einsteinathome.org) and it is sponsored and funded by the University of Wisconsin, the U.S. National Science Foundation, and many other scientific organizations. I’ve been participating for years, and you can too with just a few minutes of set-up.

Einstein@Home uses idle time on your computer to search through data collected by radio telescopes β€” data that may contain weak signals from pulsars and other deep space objects. All you have to do is download a small application to your computer that runs in the background, and while you’re working or napping or eating or reading, it will be sorting through thousands and thousands of recorded signals. To participate using your computer (desktop or laptop), just go to the “Join Now” page and follow the instructions:

The application you download is called BOINC β€” the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing application β€” and it was developed at the University of California to support “distributed computing” research projects like Einstein@Home. (IΒ believe there is also an Android version that may work on your phone, but IΒ haven’t tried that; you’ll have to experiment.) Once you download and install the BOINC application, just select Einstein@Home from among the available projects, and you’ll be up and running.

Einstein@Home isn’t an interactive project that requires you to perform any special tasks beyond the set up, so don’t worry that you need to understand advanced physics to participate! The program just runs in the background doing calculations, and so in a sense it’s a relatively passive activity overall. But your students can learn a great deal by reading about the project and understanding what kind of data are being analyzed and where they come from, if they’re so inclined. And you can all feel good about your homeschool making aΒ small contribution to the advancement of science. 😊

Once the application is up and running, Einstein@Home will produce a lovely screensaver when your computer is idle that shows a map of the heavens, the locations of the radio-signal detectors, and where in space the recording came from that your computer is currently analyzing.

Einstein@Home screensaver from RJO’s computer, showing the location in space that was being analyzed (crossed circle, top center) at the moment this screenshot was taken. The purple dots represent known pulsars.

More that 500,000 volunteers (just like you) have participated in the Einstein@Home project, and more than 40 new pulsars have thus far been discovered.

And don’t feel like you’re working alone! I created a page for a future River Houses team made up of any homeschoolers who would like to participate, and once you’ve got the program up and running you can join:

So far, I’m the only member. 😊

The Internet provides exceptional opportunities for homeschool students to participate in real research projects in a variety of scientific and scholarly fields, something that would have been impossible only a few years ago. Pay a visit to our Lunar Society page to read about many more projects, in addition to Einstein@Home, that you and your family can join.

What scientific discoveries have you made in your homeschool this month? 😊

🌟 STAR BRIGHT: Sirius for March

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We’re going to start a new thing today: a monthly great star. March is the perfect month to begin this new tradition, because just as it’s getting dark each evening at this time of year the brightest star in earth’s night sky, Sirius, appears high in the south. Brilliant white Sirius will be our star for the month.

Sirius (Ξ± Canis Majoris). (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

Sirius is the brightest star β€” the “alpha” star β€” in the constellation Canis Major, the Big Dog that trails behind Orion the Hunter as he crosses the winter and early spring sky to the west. Sirius is commonly called “the Dog Star,” marking as it does the Big Dog’s head. Its formal designation is Ξ± Canis Majoris β€” “alpha of Canis Major.”

If you want to introduce your students to Sirius, you can start with some basic astronomy from our recommended homeschool star atlas (riverhouses.org/books):

“Sirius, the brightest star in the sky (magnitude –1.44) is the most conspicuous star in this constellation [Canis Major, the Big Dog]. It is easily located by following downward the line connecting the three stars in the Belt of Orion. Sirius is the nearest star to the sun visible to the naked eye in the northern latitudes, being but 9Β light years distant. It has a white dwarf companion, a star so dense that one cubic inch weighs a ton.“ (Celestron Sky Maps, page 18)

The planisphere on the front of your star atlas will help you locate Sirius, and that’s plenty for beginning students β€” your little lesson is done. If you want to get more advanced, the Wikipedia page on Sirius is packed with additional information on everything from astrometrics to cultural history.

Sirius is indeed a double star system, but the smaller star of the pair is only visible in the largest telescopes. The name Sirius means burning, shining, or scorching in Greek (σΡίριος), either from its brightness or from the timing of its dawn rising along with the sun in mid-summer. (Today, we tend to make seasonal associations with the stars and constellations according to their evening visibility, but in ancient times, it was the dates on which particular stars rose just ahead of the sun at dawn that was commonly used for calendrical purposes.)

Sirius is roughly twice the diameter of our sun, and it is much younger β€” less than 250 million years old, in contrast to the sun’s 4.6 billion year age. Sirius was one of the first stars whose “proper motion” against the distant background was confirmed. The astronomer Edmond Halley (1656–1742), by comparing contemporary measurements of the position of Sirius with those of the ancient astronomer Claudius Ptolemy (ca. 100–170), determined that Sirius had moved about 30 arc minutes across the sky since Ptolemy’s day β€” a positional change in 1500 years equivalent to the diameter of the moon. The “fixed stars” were not so fixed after all.

Just yesterday, as I was walking back from the grocery store around sunset, I turned to the south and there was Sirius emerging in the twilight, the first star of the evening. This month, take your homeschool students out at dusk and introduce them to this great nearby sun and teach them its name, and so give them a new friend for life.

What stellar observations have you made in your homeschool lately? 🌟

❑ Alpha and beta and gamma, oh my: Most of the principal stars within each constellation have both old vernacular names β€” Vega, Sirius, Arcturus, and so on β€” as well as more formal scientific designations. The German astronomer Johann Bayer (1572–1625) devised the formal system of star designations that is still in common use today. In Bayer’s system, the stars in each constellation, from brightest to dimmest, are assigned a lowercase letter of the Greek alphabet: Ξ± (alpha, brightest), Ξ² (beta, second brightest), Ξ³ (gamma, third brightest), Ξ΄ (delta, fourth brightest), and so on. This letter designation is combined with the Latin name of the constellation in its possessive (genitive) form: Lyra becomes Lyrae (“of Lyra”), Canis Major becomes Canis Majoris (“of Canis Major”), and so on. The brightest star in the constellation Lyra (the star Vega) thus becomes Ξ± Lyrae (“alpha of Lyra”), the brightest star in Canis Major (the star Sirius) becomes Ξ± Canis Majoris (“alpha of Canis Major”), and so on, through all 24 Greek letters and all 88 constellations. How bright would you expect, say, the Οƒ (sigma) star of Orion to be? Not very bright β€” it’s far down the alphabet β€” but Οƒ Orionis happens to be the top star of Orion’s sword, so even though it’s not very bright it’s still easy to locate on a dark night.

❑ Watchers of the skies: Teaching your students to recognize the constellations is one of the simplest and most enduring gifts you can give them. The planisphere on the front of your River Houses star atlas (riverhouses.org/books) will let you dial up the northern hemisphere sky for any night of the year, and the descriptions and maps of each constellation will point out the highlights, including the names and characteristics of the brightest stars. Why not find a dark-sky spot near you this month and spend some quality homeschool time beneath the starry vault. 🌠 πŸ”­ 🌌 🌟

🌠 WATCHERS OF THE SKIES – March 2019

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On the first Friday of every month we post educational skywatching notes for the homeschool month ahead. Here’s the monthly northern hemisphere review for March 2019, courtesy of the Hubble Space Telescope’s website:

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For serious homeschool skywatchers, the weekly updates from Sky & Telescope magazine provide a wealth of additional detail. Here’s the latest one:

The best stargazing nights in March will be toward the beginning of the month β€” the moon will be new (and the sky darkest) on Wednesday the 6th. As always, you can track the moon’s phases at the excellent timeanddate.com website.

March is the first month of Leo Term in the River Houses, the third of the four terms that make up our homeschool year. Although Orion still dominates the early evening sky, Leo is now rising in the east later in the evening and over the next three months he will be chasing Orion over the horizon to the west.

March is also the month of the spring (vernal) equinox in the northern hemisphere β€” the astronomical beginning of spring β€” which falls this year on Wednesday the 20th. (In the southern hemisphere the 20th will be the autumnal equinox β€” the astronomical beginning of fall.) On the day of the equinox we experience almost exactly twelve hours of light and twelve hours of darkness.

What celestial observations have you made in your homeschool lately? 😊

❑ Watchers of the skies: Teaching your students to recognize the constellations is one of the simplest and most enduring gifts you can give them. The planisphere on the front of your River Houses star atlas (riverhouses.org/books) will let you dial up the northern hemisphere sky for any night of the year, and the descriptions and maps of each constellation will point out the highlights. Find a dark-sky spot near you this month and spend some quality homeschool time beneath the starry vault. 🌠 πŸ”­ 🌌

πŸ“š LIBRARY TUESDAY: Copernicus and His Revolutions

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Today is the birthday of one of the most important figures in the history of science: the great Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543). In his honor, why not take a few homeschool minutes to introduce your students to Copernicus’ great work, On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres (De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium), first published in 1543.

[Copernicus' heliocentric system]
The heliocentric model of Copernicus, from De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (1543). Note the sun (Sol) at the center, and the earth (Terra) in the third orbit, along with earth’s moon. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

“De Rev” (as history of science geeks call it) is one of the most important books ever published because it laid out a comprehensive sun-centered or heliocentric picture of the solar system, replacing the earlier earth-centered or geocentric picture.

Fewer than 300 copies of the original 1543 edition of De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium survive today. But we live in a truly fortunate age, when a young student can sit at home and examine up close some of the rarest and most important books in history β€” books that just a few years ago would have been accessible only to professional scholars in the world’s largest libraries.

Here is a copy of the “De Rev” that has been scanned and made available by RareBookRoom.org, a wonderful site that provides online access to some of the most important books ever written. The scans are very high resolution so all the pages can be examined one by one in great detail, right down to old handwritten notes in the margins and to the texture of the paper as it was impressed by the metal type. Spend a few homeschool minutes today with your students (at a large screen rather than a phone) exploring this bibliographic treasure:

The text is in Latin β€” the language of all scientific books written at that time β€” and the printing is exceptionally fine. Zoom in on a few pages using theΒ βˆ’/+ scale at the top of the page to get a full appreciation for this great work, not only of science, but of the printer’s art as well.

If you have curious science students in your homeschool, be sure they know the name of Nicolaus Copernicus and how he changed our understanding of the world.

What treasures have you discovered in your library lately? 😊

❑ Explore more: For a quick review of the Renaissance, the historical period in which Copernicus lived, turn to pages 250–253 in your River Houses history encyclopedia (riverhouses.org/books), and for an overview of the Scientific Revolution that he helped to spark see pages 266–267. It’s just the background you need for a wonderful homeschool history lesson.

🌠 WATCHERS OF THE SKIES: The Starry Messenger

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Galileo Galilei, one of the most important scientists in history, was born on this day in 1564. Why not spend a little homeschool time this week learning about him at your local library or online. 😊

I’ve been having some computer problems today and can’t post a full notice, but here are two great resources you and your students can explore (preferably with a large screen rather than a phone):

And here is a classic Galilean proof β€” dropping a hammer and a feather together on the moon (which has no atmosphere and so no atmospheric friction) and observing that they fall at exactly the same rate:

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That behavior is so counterintuitive to our earth-derived common sense that it’s difficult to absorb, even when we see it with our own eyes. “Mr. Galileo was correct!”

Take a few homeschool minutes this week to introduce your students to one of the great minds of human history.

What scientific discoveries have you made in your homeschool this week? 😊

🌠 WATCHERS OF THE SKIES – February 2019

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On the first Friday of every month we post educational skywatching notes for the homeschool month ahead. Here’s the monthly northern hemisphere review for February 2019, courtesy of the Hubble Space Telescope’s website. It features, naturally enough during this final month of Orion Term, the Great Hunter himself and his companion the Big Dog (Canis Major):

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For serious homeschool skywatchers, the weekly updates from Sky & Telescope magazine provide a wealth of additional detail. Here’s the latest one:

The best stargazing nights in February will be toward the beginning of the month β€” the moon will be new (and the sky darkest) on the 4th. As always, you can track the moon’s phases at the excellent timeanddate.com website.

If you want a simple astronomy project for your homeschool that will only take a few minutes, why not make it a point each month to learn the name of one star. All the brightest stars have individual names, many of them Arabic in origin, and learning those names opens up a world of discovery. You can start this month (the last month of Orion Term) by learning Betelgeuse, the bright red star that marks Orion’s left shoulder. Betelgeuse is a red giant, vastly larger than our sun; in fact, if Betelgeuse were in the position of our sun, it would engulf much of the solar system, all the way out to Jupiter. If your students can recognize Orion in the winter sky, and learn the name of Betelgeuse, they’ll have a friend for life.

Betelgeuse, the red giant that marks the left shoulder of Orion. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

What celestial observations have you made in your homeschool lately? 😊

❑ Watchers of the skies: Teaching your students to recognize the constellations is one of the simplest and most enduring gifts you can give them. The planisphere on the front of your River Houses star atlas (riverhouses.org/books) will let you dial up the northern hemisphere sky for any night of the year, and the descriptions and maps of each constellation will point out the highlights. Find a dark-sky spot near you this month and spend some quality homeschool time beneath the starry vault. 🌠 πŸ”­ 🌌

πŸ–‹ WONDERFUL WORDS: The Stellar Gauge of Earthly Show

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We have an extra homeschool poem this week, for tonight’s grand astronomical event: a beautiful sonnet-masterpiece from Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) that asks three questions and gives no answers. Why not read it with your students tonight.

At a Lunar Eclipse

Thy shadow, Earth, from Pole to Central Sea,
Now steals along upon the Moon’s meek shine
In even monochrome and curving line
Of imperturbable serenity.

How shall I link such sun-cast symmetry
With the torn troubled form I know as thine,
That profile, placid as a brow divine,
With continents of moil and misery?

And can immense Mortality but throw
So small a shade, and Heaven’s high human scheme
Be hemmed within the coasts yon arc implies?

Is such the stellar gauge of earthly show,
Nation at war with nation, brains that teem,
Heroes, and women fairer than the skies?

What wonderful words have you found and what literary discoveries have you made in your homeschool this week? 😊

❑ Count and map: When you introduce your students to a new poem, especially one in a traditional form, the first thing to have them do is count the syllables and map the rhyme scheme. How many syllables in each line in this poem? Ten throughout. (And that gives you a clue about how certain words should be pronounced: Heaven’s is one long syllable, not two.) The ten syllables in each line follow a generally iambic pattern, with the accent on the second syllable of each pair (most of the time). That makes this poem iambic pentameter. What about the rhyme scheme? The first two stanzas are sea–shine–line–serenity and symmetry–thine–divine–misery. That looks like ABBA ABBA. The next six lines follow a different pattern: CDE CDE. By uncovering these details of structure your students will come to appreciate good poems as carefully crafted pieces of literary labor.

❑ The stellar gauge of earthly show: If a special line or turn of phrase happens to strike you in one of our weekly poems, just copy it onto your homeschool bulletin board for a few days and invite your students to speak it aloud β€” that’s all it takes to begin a new poetical friendship and learn a few lovely words that will stay with you for life. 😊

❑ Explore more: The Poetry Foundation’s website includes biographical notes and examples of the work of many important poets (including Thomas Hardy) that are suitable for high school students and homeschool teachers.

β˜€οΈπŸŒπŸŒ• LUNAR ECLIPSE Sunday Night and Monday Morning (20–21 January 2019)

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Just a reminder that there is a total lunar eclipse coming this Sunday night and Monday morning (20–21 January 2019). It will be visible across all of North and South America, weather permitting, and will be a homeschool event not to be missed.

For full details on the exact time for your location, visit the timeanddate.com eclipse page:

Speaking of weather permitting, it’s not looking good here in the northeast. The snow and sleet just started an hour ago and is expected to continue all through Sunday with six to eight inches of total accumulation. If you find yourself in that position, don’t despair. Thanks to the miracle of modern technology, you can watch the eclipse live as it happens across the country:

πŸŽ₯

So if it’s too snowy or too rainy or too cold to go out, you and your homescholars can spend a successful eclipse-viewing evening right at home by your fireside.

What other celestial observations have you been making in your homeschool lately? 😊

❑ Watchers of the skies: Teaching your students to recognize the constellations is one of the simplest and most enduring gifts you can give them. The planisphere on the front of your River Houses star atlas (riverhouses.org/books) will let you dial up the northern hemisphere sky for any night of the year, and the descriptions and maps of each constellation will point out the highlights. Find a dark-sky spot near you this month and spend some quality homeschool time beneath the starry vault. 🌠 πŸ”­ 🌌

πŸŒ• HOMESCHOOL ASTRONOMY: The Moon’s Far Side (and a Lunar Eclipse)

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The far side of the moon was completely unknown through most of human history. It wasn’t until 1959 that it was first photographed (by the Soviet Luna 3 probe), and it wasn’t until this month that a soft landing was accomplished. The Chinese lunar lander Chang’e 4 successfully touched down on January 3rd, and since then has been sending back the first-ever surface-level pictures of the moon’s far side.

The Chinese Chang’e 4 lunar lander on the far side of the moon, January 2019. (Image: Smithsonian magazine.)

Here’s a good report to share with your homeschool students this week on what Chang’e 4 is up to, from Smithsonian magazine:

The Chinese lander touched down inside the Von KΓ‘rmΓ‘n crater in the moon’s southern hemisphere. Where exactly is that landing site? If you pull out your homeschool atlas (riverhouses.org/books) you can find it right there on plate 123. (Did you know your atlas has beautiful maps of the moon? It does!)

Our River Houses mascot Horace the Otter decided to investigate the far side of the moon himself, just to see what all the fuss was about.

Horace the River Otter explores the far side of the moon.

And he successfully put his own paw-print down right next to the Von KΓ‘rmΓ‘n crater β€” sure enough, there it is!

Horace the River Otter sets his paw down beside the landing site of the Chinese Chang’e 4 lunar probe.

If you want to teach a clever little lesson in the history of science, take out not just your atlas but also your homeschool dictionary (riverhouses.org/books), which has biographical entries interfiled with the main alphabet, and look up the names of the craters surrounding the Von KΓ‘rmΓ‘n landing site: Leibniz, Leeuwenhoek, Oppenheimer, Boyle, Oresme, Thomson β€” famous scientists all! (See how all our educational schemes and tools fit together here in the River Houses?) 😊

And speaking of the moon, a timely reminder: there is a total lunar eclipse coming up later this month, on the night of 20–21 January. It’s marked on our annual River Houses calendar, and you should mark it on your homeschool calendar too! We’ll have more to say about it as the date approaches.

What celestial observations have you made in your homeschool lately? 😊

❑ Watchers of the skies: Teaching your students to recognize the constellations is one of the simplest and most enduring gifts you can give them. The planisphere on the front of your River Houses star atlas (riverhouses.org/books) will let you dial up the northern hemisphere sky for any night of the year, and the descriptions and maps of each constellation will point out the highlights. Find a dark-sky spot near you this month and spend some quality homeschool time beneath the starry vault. 🌠 πŸ”­ 🌌

🌜 WATCHERS OF THE SKIES – 2019 Lunar Eclipse Edition

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On the first Friday of every month we post educational skywatching notes for the homeschool month ahead. This month is special because there is a total lunar eclipse on the way, and it will be visible across all of North and South America on the night of 20–21 January (Sunday–Monday). This will be a homeschool event not to be missed! You can find all the details at timeanddate.com:

The partial-eclipse phase will begin on the evening of Sunday the 20th about 10:30 pm in the eastern US time zone, with the peak of totality arriving about 12:15 am on Monday the 21st. The timeanddate.com website will let you find the exact times for your own specific location.

Zone of visibility for the January 2019 total lunar eclipse. (Image: timeanddate.com.)

The lunar eclipse isn’t the only thing happening this month, of course. We usually post the monthly northern hemisphere review from the Hubble Space Telescope’s website here, but they seem to be a bit behind at the moment and their video isn’t up yet. Here’s their main page (still showing the December video at this writing) β€” you can check it from time to time for updates:

The monthly advanced summary from space.com is up to date, and it provides lots of details that are perfect for every serious young astronomy student:

The best stargazing nights in January will be toward the beginning of the month β€” the moon will be new (and the sky darkest) on the 5th.

What celestial observations have you made in your homeschool lately? 😊

❑ Watchers of the skies: Teaching your students to recognize the constellations is one of the simplest and most enduring gifts you can give them. The planisphere on the front of your River Houses star atlas (riverhouses.org/books) will let you dial up the northern hemisphere sky for any night of the year, and the descriptions and maps of each constellation will point out the highlights. Find a dark-sky spot near you this month and spend some quality homeschool time beneath the starry vault. 🌠 πŸ”­ 🌌

❄️ THE DECEMBER SOLSTICE is Here!

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Today is the December solstice β€” we call it the winter solstice in the northern hemisphere, but in the southern hemisphere it’s the summer solstice. The winter solstice is (astronomically speaking) the first day of winter, just as the summer solstice is (astronomically speaking) the first day of summer.

Whenever you’re investigating things temporal or calendrical, timeanddate.com is always a good place to start:

The seasons occur because the earth’s axis of daily rotation is not quite perpendicular to the plane of the earth’s annual orbit around the sun (it’s tilted by about 23ΒΊ). The two solstices occur at the points in the orbit when the axis is tilted most directly away from the sun (in December, on the first day of northern-hemisphere winter), and most directly toward the sun (in June, on the first day of northern-hemisphere summer). The two equinoxes, in March and September, occur when the earth’s axis is “sideways” to the sun (so to speak), making the intervals of daylight and darkness equal (or very nearly so).

The two equinoxes (March and September) and the two solstices (June and December) are defined with respect to the earth’s position in its annual orbit around the sun. (Image: timeanddate.com.)

NASA has a fun educational crossword puzzle for kids that’s filled with seasonal vocabulary β€” solstices, equinoxes, and more.

Solstices, equinoxes, orbits, and more! A seasonal crossword puzzle for kids. (Image: NASA.)

You can print out your own copy at NASA’s “For Educators” website.

What calendrical events and astronomical transitions will you be marking in your homeschool this season? 😊