Grade 9

Space Exploration: Journey of Discovery

Program Length: 60 to 90 minutes

Curriculum Connection

Grade 9 - Unit E: Space Exploration

For thousands of years, we have been exploring space by simply keeping an eye on the sky. During that time, we discovered five planets using just our eyes and as our technology improved, we've been making even more discoveries. Since the invention of the telescope, more than 400 years ago, many new worlds have been discovered and when the Space Age started, more than 60 years ago, we started sending robotic spacecraft to some of those distant worlds. We have even sent astronauts to the Moon and will be sending more astronauts there soon! Space exploration is a very exciting journey of discovery and with each passing year, we make more amazing discoveries!

This program is all about the technology used to explore space. Two spectacular and immersive full-dome movies are part of this program. The first movie is entitled Two Small Pieces of Glass: The Amazing Telescope and it is focused on telescopes and the associated equipment used to explore space. Your students will learn about refractors and reflectors, spherical aberration, spectroscopy, the Doppler Effect, blue shift and red shift, adaptive optics, and more.

The second full-dome movie is entitled Back to the Moon for Good and it features several groups of people, from around the world, who are working to build a small spacecraft that will land on the Moon. In addition to these two full-dome movies, this program also includes an interactive altitude-azimuth coordinate system mini-lesson, which takes place inside the planetarium.

Also included (if time permits) is a brief version of the live planetarium presentation entitled The Sky Tonight and a short Question and Answer session.

If you don't have time for a 90-minute program, you can remove either one of these full-dome movies (your choice) and reduce the duration of this program to 60 minutes. If you don't quite have 90 minutes, but you do have about 80 or 85 minutes, the 90-minute program can be shortened somewhat to fit the amount of time you have available.