By: Franca Driessen,
on 2/9/2016
The Earth we live on was formed from a cloud of dust and ice, heated by a massive ball of compressed hydrogen that was the early Sun. Somewhere along the four billion year journey to where we are today, our planet acquired life, and some of that became us. Our modern brains ask how it all came together and progressed, and what shaped the pathways it followed.
The post Blue planet blues appeared first on OUPblog.
By: Priscilla Yu,
on 12/17/2015
This July, a NASA space probe completed our set of images of the planets, at least as I knew them growing up. New Horizons, a probe that launched back in 2006, arrived at Pluto and its moons, and over a very brief encounter, started to send back thousands of images of this hitherto barely known place.
The post Place of the Year nominee spotlight: Dwarf planet Pluto appeared first on OUPblog.
By: Yasmin Coonjah,
on 10/10/2015
The story of our Solar System is developing into one of the most absorbing – and puzzling – epics of contemporary science. At the heart of it lies one of the greatest questions of all – just how special is our own planet, which teems with life and (this is the difficult bit) which has teemed with life continuously through most of its 4.5 billion year lifetime? Not all of the answers are to be found here on Earth.
The post Mars, Pluto… and beyond appeared first on OUPblog.
By: KatherineS,
on 7/31/2015
NASA’s New Horizons probe swept past Pluto and its moons at 17 km per second on 14 July. Even from the few close up images yet beamed back we can say that Pluto’s landscape is amazing. Charon, Pluto’s largest moon, is quite a sight too, and I’m glad that I delayed publication of my forthcoming Very Short Introduction to Moons so that I could include it.
The post Pluto and Charon at last! appeared first on OUPblog.
Those fictional stories are a good jumping off point for further discussions about the night sky and outer space. My kids have been fascinated with outer space for a long time. Last year my six year old even had an outer space themed birthday party at the local science center. My kids enjoy perusing the outer space/astronomy section of our local library and checking out books about planets and space exploration. Since this is a frequently read about topic in our household, I've decided to share some of our family's favorite non-fiction outer space books.
My Book of Space
Though a bit out of date (this book was published in 2001) this book provides a good overview of the solar system, the phases of the moon and space exploration.
Our Solar System
