Where Are We?

Where Do I Fit in the universe?

This is you (it looks just like you, doesn't it?).

Where are you right now? At school? At home? Camping in a forest with excellent WIFI?

Let's pretend that you're at Suzuki Charter School.

Suzuki Charter School is in Edmonton. Edmonton is our city!

Let's zoom out a bit more.

Edmonton is located in the province of Alberta.

We haven't left our planet yet, so let's keep zooming!

Let's zoom out a bit more, this is starting to get interesting...

Alberta is in the country of Canada, and Canada is part of the continent of North America

We live in the Northern Hemisphere.

The Earth is split into a Northern and Southern Hemisphere by the equator, an imaginary line that runs along the center of Earth (kind of like a belt!)

This is important to note when we learn about seasons, because seasons are different in each hemisphere at a certain time of year!

Earth is our planet. It rotates every 24 hours (hello, day and night!) and revolves around the Sun (more about that in a minute).

Earth also has a moon, which we will learn about later in the unit!

Can we zoom out more?

photo credit: https://www.demilked.com/earth-size-vs-other-planets/

Zoom out more, and you'll see that we are a part of a solar system. There are 8 planets in our solar system, all which revolve around the sun

Just like we call our star, "Sun", our planetary system is the only one called "solar system"! Cool, huh?

But... what's beyond our solar system?

Our solar system is part of the Milky Way Galaxy.

Astronomers have found more than 500 solar systems in this galaxy so far, but estimate that there may be as many as 100 billion solar systems in the Milky Way.

So... are galaxies as big as it gets?

Well, this looks like the end of our trip... UNIVERSE!

The Universe contains all of space and time and their contents. It is a giant, ever-expanding span of matter and energy. It's origin is up for debate: did small particles slowly team up and gradually form stars, star clusters, and eventually galaxies? Or did the Universe first organize as immense clumps of matter that later subdivided into galaxies?

The number of estimated galaxies is constantly changing, but currently sits at anywhere from 200 billion to 2 trillion!

Let's Wrap It Up:

Page updated

Report abuse