Astronomical games III. The Sun and planetary skies

In two last entries, everything about solar system scales, sizes of the sun and the planets, distances from the planets to the sun and characteristics about their composition and their skies. However, how big is the sun in every planetary sky?

Astronomical games II. Planetary landscapes

Have you thought in other worlds?

Astronomical games I. The Solar System

Time ago I had the opportunity to visit a primary school in UK to talk about astronomy. Back to Mexico I used to give and enjoy outreach talks about science. In UK I started to talk about Mexican culture and after a year I had the opportunity to give talks about astronomy for kids. I was a little scared about this new experience as it is in some way is easiest to speak with adults (more if they are academics) than to speak to kids. Anyway, it was my second year in UK and I wanted to share a little part of the knowledge of the universe to these little guys and discover as I discovered before with other kids, new thoughts and very interesting questions.

The man on the street

The man on the street lives and sleeps. He sees sights with beautiful sunrises and sunsets. He does not worry if Earth’s rotation is the origin of day and night cycle. The man on the street spends his life through the years: Holydays and cold during the winter; the spring so full of flowers and hopes; the summer of the vacations; and the autumn plenty of leaves fall and calm. He does not think about the Earth’s translation around the Sun or about the inclination of the terrestrial axis.

The man on the street walks and sometimes he falls ill (although some of humans’ epidemics have happened every 11 years, he does not know that the solar cycle of 11 years as well).

The music of the Sun, a new musical hit?

In the antiquity people used to believe that the Sun was turning around the Earth. They though that this was the cause of days and nights in our Earth. Nowadays we know that it is the Earth and the other planets, which actually turn around the Sun.

In the antiquity people also believed in the existence of a celestial and wonderful music played by the planets and the spheres made of ether in our universe. Nowadays we know that that old substance named ether does not exist and that the universe actually is constituted of a matter named plasma. But what about the music? Does it exist or not?