Today Mr Rose came in to talk to us about space.  It was very interesting! Here are a few facts we found out:

Barron worked out that 1000 seconds is 16 minutes and 40 seconds. (He worked this out in his head!)

There are 200 billion stars in our galaxy.

We learned a mnemonic to remember the different planets: My Very Elegant Mother Just Spewed Up Nine Pizzas. However this does not include the asteroid belt so he told us of the one he learnt when he was at school: Most Volcanos Erupt Marmalade And Jam Sandwiches Under Normal Pressure. But we like the first one best! 🙂

The sun is about 17-20 million degrees and its not on fire.

The Northern lights happen through the parts coming off the sun and hitting the earths atmosphere.

The planets travel around the sun at different speeds because the closer you are to the sun the less distance you have to travel and the gravitational pull speeds you up. So the closer you are the faster you go. Mr Rose had a powerpoint which showed the speed and direction of the planets orbiting the sun. It was cool to watch.

The half of Mercury that is towards the sun is hot (410 ̊C) and the other half is cold (-170̊C)

You couldn’t live in Venus because you would be suffocated because its mostly made of carbon dioxide, squashed because the weight of the air would crush you, baked because it is the hottest planet at 460̊C and you would dissolve because of another gas which is very powerful. And it stinks!!! Venus is covered in clouds which keep the heat in, this is why it is so hot. A day on Venus is longer than 1 year.

Mars is very cold.

We really enjoyed his visit and look forward to him coming back next week for another session!