Moon Phases

Guiding Question: What are the phases of the moon?  Why do they occur? 
Hypothesis:  I predict that all of the sides that the moon is turned that the half of thye moon will be lightened.  
Materials: 

• One big Styrofoam ball
• one  small styrofoam ball
• a toophpick
• a barbaque stick
• a torch
• and a ruler 

When making bthe expiriment today we had to gather the materials, which would represent a planet or body in space. The big styrofoam ball represented the planet Earth, which was stuck on the stick, in order to hold it without touching the styrofoam. On the big styrofoam ball was attached by a toothpick a small sturofoam ball which represented the Earhts moon. The torch represented the sun, and the ruler we had to use so we can measure the distance between the sun and the Earth, which was 30 centimeters for the model and in real life it is 149, 597, 870.7 kilometers. What i would do to resolve this question i rotated the earth slowly around to see what will happen, and I have noticed that when it is day on Earth, we see only the dark side of the moon, and when it is night we see the lighted part of the moon, which lets us see the moon. And when the moon is one of hemispheres like the west or east hemisphere, the moon will be a crescent moon. The moon changes its phase every month, due to its rotations.

Equanoix and Seasons Expiriment

Problem: How does the tilt of the Earth's axis affect the light received by the Earth as it revolves around the sun.

Hypothesis: My hypothesis is as the Earth rotates on its axis there is night and day. Because the Earth is tilted the when on one side the sun shines on the North Pole, in the South Pole it's dark, and also the other way round. The stick which used as an example is going to change length as it rotates.

Experiment: The Earth is tilted 23.5 degree, so, we made a model out of a Styrofoam ball, and we used a pencil to stuck it properly, while the toothpick was used as an axis. The flash light was representing the sun, while the little grid line was put in front of the flash light. My observation was: as we moved  the flash light from the away ball, the grid lines were getting bigger and less visible at the North Pole, while at the equator the lines were more visible and defined. As we brought the grid closer the lines got much more visible at the equator but less visible at Poles. I noticed that when the light is pointing directly to the equator, the grid squares were having the shape of a square, while as you go more to the north the squares were getting more stretched and became more rectangle shaped. This happens because where the light rays are stronger they will produce sharp, well defined shades, and where there is less light the squares will be less visible and sharp. In the real world, where the Sun points directly to the Earth the light will be the strongest. This happens because our Earth has an axis which is an invisible line that goes right through the Earth. This is the reason that we have seasons, without the axis we wouldn't have them, we would just have summer and winter equinox.This is also the reason why there is permanent Summer on the equator and why the Poles have very short and cold summers. 

NEW PLANETS DISCOVERED IN NEW YEAR OF 2012

 NEW PLANETS DISCOVERED IN NEW YEAR OF 2012

NASA's Kepler mission has discovered 11 new planetary systems hosting 26 confirmed planets. Such systems will help astronomers better understand how planets form.

The planets orbit close to their host stars and vary in size from 1.5 times the radius of Earth to larger than Jupiter. Fifteen are between Earth and Neptune in size. Further observations will be necessary to find out which are rocky like Earth and which have thick gaseous atmospheres like Neptune. The planets orbit their host star once every six to 143 days. All are closer to their host star than Venus is to our sun.
Prior to the Kepler mission, we knew of perhaps 500 planets outside of the Solar System across the whole sky. Now, in just two years staring at a piece of sky not much bigger than your fist, Kepler has discovered more than 60 planets and more than 2,300 planet candidates. This tells us that our galaxy is absolutely loaded with planets of all sizes and orbits.
Kepler identifies planet candidates by repeatedly measuring the change in brightness of more than 150,000 stars to discover when a planet passes in front of the star. That passage casts a small shadow toward Earth and the Kepler spacecraft.
By exactly timing when each planet passes its star, Kepler discovered the gravitational pull of the planets on each other, confirming the case for 10 of the newly announced planetary systems. Five of the systems (Kepler-25, Kepler-27, Kepler-30, Kepler-31 and Kepler-33) contain a pair of planets where the inner planet orbits the star twice during each orbit of the outer planet. Four of the systems (Kepler-23, Kepler-24, Kepler-28 and Kepler-32) contain a combination where the outer planet circles the star twice for every three times the inner planet orbits its star.
Kepler-33, a star that is older and more massive than our sun, had the most planets. The system hosts five planets, varying in size from 1.5 to 5 times that of Earth. All of the planets are placed closer to their star than any planet is to our sun.
The features of a star provide clues for planet detection. The decrease in the star's brightness and length of a planet’s journey combined with the features of its host star present a recognizable mark. When astronomers detect planet candidates that exhibit similar signatures around the same star, the possibility of any of these planet candidates being a false positive is very low.