Amaze Your Brain at Home: Space
Race around the solar system with astronomical activities! Museum educators will teach you about our neighboring red planet, experiment with the size of planets to understand their distance from Earth, and share ways to stargaze.
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All Ages
Scaling the Solar System
Join a Museum educator to shrink the solar system! Gather household items to represent the planets in our galaxy, and download the experiment to better understand the size of these cosmic objects and their distance from Earth.
Making it to Mars
Grab your spacesuit and get ready for travel to the red planet! Join a Museum educator to find out how rockets escape Earth’s orbit, learn what to search for on a typical mission to Mars, and build your own rover using a common kitchen ingredient.
Backyard Stargazing
Explore some of the amazing sites in our universe from your own home. Learn how you can stargaze by printing our star wheel pdf* and utilize some at-home equipment to get started.
*Kepler Star Wheels reproduced with permission from NASA Kepler Mission and University of California, Lawrence Hall of Science.
Snacking in Space
Attention all astronauts-in-training! In order to travel the universe, you’ve got to have some space-tacular food for the journey. Tune in for instructions on how to make the best snacks in the galaxy and watch a real astronaut prepare mac and cheese while on an expedition.
Expanding Universe
The Doppler Effect (an increase or decrease in our frequencies) is common to our daily experience through sound and light, but has also allowed keen insights into the world around us and the universe beyond. Explore how this effect works and relates to the cosmological redshift, one of the first pieces of evidence of an expanding universe.
Out of this World
Launch into astrobiology and discover the three things organisms need to survive on Earth. You can also soar into endless possibilities and create your own creature fit for an extreme environment in our galaxy!
*NASA Photos/Visuals for Venus, Mars, Titan, and Enceladus (https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/index.html and https://images.nasa.gov/)
The Stars and Ancient Cultures
Discover how ancient civilizations like the Navajo, Inuit, Ancient Egyptians, Maya, and others looked to the stars to align with their faith. Learn how constellations represented manifestations of Indigenous beliefs, symbolized gods in Greek mythology, and how calendars like Stonehenge and the Mayan calendar were utilized by prehistoric societies to explain and rationalize concepts of our solar system and life.
Early Childhood (Ages 18 months - 4 yrs)
It’s Sun O’Clock
You don’t need batteries or electricity for this clock! Teach your toddler to tell time when you design a sundial using common household objects.
Career Inspiration
Planetary Geologist
Join Dr. Penny Morris-Smith on her out-of-this-world journey of becoming a planet geologist where she studies planets, moons, asteroids, comets, and other celestial bodies. Discover how life would be on other planets in our solar system and take a deep dive into her astronomical career.
Astronomy
Discover how the Laws of Physics inspired Dr. Shardha Jogee to become an astronomer. Learn what the planets, stars, and galaxies tell us about the universe and find out how it’s changed over time.