Jupiter and Saturn

On the day we talked about Jupiter I dressed up as Jupiter. The children thought this was really funny. (And it was!) :)

Malachi wanted to be Jupiter too. He wasn't as round as I was, though.

Jupiter is such an interesting planet. It has a huge magnetosphere; much bigger than it should be, from what else we know about it. So, of course it has aurora at the poles. We liked this video showing Jupiter's aurora.

Naturally, the children were fascinated when they heard about the Shoemaker-Levy collision with Jupiter. Here is a video about it.

Saturn has aurora too.

One of our books had a picture of what Saturn would look like in the sky from its moon, Titan. (It looked something like this.) (Titan is one of our favorite moons anyway. It has lakes and rivers of liquid methane on it! So interesting.) Anyway, Sebby formed an instant bond of fear/fascination with "Big Saturn from Titan," and in his usual way of dealing with odd fears, he drew and talked about it endlessly. He has even composed a piece of piano music called "Big Saturn from Titan"(you can imagine what it sounds like). :) He says that he's not scared of Saturn in the normal way of things, only when it's "looking at you like a big eye in the sky." I guess I can understand that. Anyway, this video shows what several of the planets would look like in our sky, if they were as close to us as our moon is. The children, especially Sebby, wanted to watch it over and over again. (And he came and got into my bed after a nightmare that night. Coincidence?) So view at your own risk!