Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Star Map


Would you believe that today was the first time we used a star map?

I'm not quite sure why exactly I was always so confused by the simple thing, but I was.

We actually brought this little plastic one with us when we moved, but the one that my mom had was sturdier and a little easier to understand. Still, this will do, and worked just fine.

All you do is line up the time of day it is with the day of the month it is, and then in the little circular window you will have a picture of "what's in the sky tonight".

We also used a compass to make sure that we were facing the correct way, and then pointed out quite a few fun constellations. We couldn't see all the stars on the map, but we could see the major ones.

This is a pretty cool aid to not only see what constellations are visible at the current time of the year, and where to find them in the sky, but also for teaching the concept of why certain stars are visible at different times of years, and why star maps are different for different hemispheres of the earth (both north/south and east/west).

"Is not God in the height of heaven? and behold the height of the stars, how high they are!" 
Job 22:12
Hunter is 4 years, 9 months old

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