Give a Planet a Makeover

Today, Angela and I made our own planet! We can control the age, the temperature, the size and the star type (F, G, or M). We also made many different ones and the results we got were:

• Gas Giant
• Earth-like planet
• Super-Earth
• Hot Rock
• Iceball
• Hot Jupitor (or Neptune)

You can start with a default planet (Earth, G1 581, and Mars), and simply design and engineer your planet from there.

Our planet is very close to the sun: very large and hot. Additionally, our star is class G, and it is 7 billion years old. It is called the Hot Jupitor (or Neptune).

The link to this website is Extreme Planet Makeover.

Visiting California Academy of Sciences

Visiting the Academy of Sciences is a fun thing to do on a rainy day. Inside you can discover and and learn a lot of new things.

A few things I did was go to the planetarium, go in the aquarium,and go in "Rain Forests of The World". I liked everything except the the planetarium. I didn't like the planetarium because it was only about how the world was going to end, and because I didn't feel like i actually was in space. Otherwise, I liked the academy of science.
The academy of sciences is a "all day" trip. I went in the planetarium, the "Around The World Rain forest", and the aquarium. I was at the Academy of Sciences for about 4-5 hours and I only looked at about 1/3 of the Academy of Sciences.

Below is a video that I made about the Academy of Sciences. You can also watch it on Animoto.com.

More Planets Found

Researchers at the European Southern Observatory's La Silla facility in Chile have discovered 32 new planets outside the solar system which takes the number of "exoplanets" up to a whooping 400!

Your probably wondering, what the heck is an exoplanet is. Well, an exoplanet or extrasolar planet, is a planet beyond our solar system that orbits a star other than the sun. They found it using a a 3.6m telescope.

Scientists Find More Exoplanet

Assignment: Zack
Has learning the planets just gotten harder? Scientists announce that they've found more planets. Astronomers say there are 32 new planets outside our Solar System, taking the number of known exoplanets to more than 400.

Write a news story about this event. You can use this BBC News story as your source.

Remember to use the five W's of a good news story. Also, explain what an exoplanet is. Use a photo from this page.

Make Over a Planet

Extreme Planet Makeover lets visitors create new worlds, instantly, online. The website—a collaboration between NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab and Caltech—lets you adjust your planet's size and age, its distance from the sun, and the kind of star that sun is. You can make gas giants or tiny, Pluto-like rocks, or aim for the sweet spots in between. When you're done, visit the Planet Gallery and stack your world up against other planets in our own solar system—or a few that lie far beyond it.

Create and take a screen grab of your own planet. Then write an article about this website. Remember to answer the five W's of a good story: who, what, when, where, and why. Then, tell Herald readers how your planet compares to those in our solar system/