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about our Moon
Introduction to these materials
Introduction to these materials
Our Moon is a pretty amazing object! There are lots of fascinating facts around the Moon that can really fire up your imagination. In the materials below we have compiled some of the ones that excited us the most...
Ideas and Inspiration for the classroom
Ideas and Inspiration for the classroom
get your students to look at the fun facts below:
What surprised them the most?
Do they know any other facts that are not in our list?
Build your own telescope as per the instructions in the video below
Get your students to draw their own map of the Moon
The Moon comes closer
The Moon comes closer
About 400 years ago the English doctor and philosopher William Gilbert drew a map of the Moon using only his naked eye. As far as anyone knows it was the first ever ‘map’ of the lunar surface. He sketched and labelled the dark and bright patches.
Gilbert died six years before the invention of the telescope, which allowed much more detailed observation of the Moon's ever-changing surface.
Have you ever looked through a telescope ? A man called Galileo was supposed to be the first man to do this in 1609.
Galileo recognised the shifting shadows of the moons craters. He watched night after night and recorder the orbit around the giant planet.
As the telescopes improved the science of studying the skies improved.
Image: An early map of the Moon by William Gilbert
image: Astronomer Galileo holding his treasured telescope
A few hundred years on, telescopes had become available to many people, and a lot of them used them to get an up-close look at the Moon.
One of these people was Nelsonian Arthur Atkinson who brought the first large telescope to Nelson about 100 years ago.
But today, anyone can make their own telescope at home - just like another famous man from Nelson, Albert Jones, did in his backyard in Stoke.
Make your own telescope to look at the Moon!
Make your own telescope to look at the Moon!
Nelson's first telescope in the Alton St observatory, 1903. Atkinson Observatory. Nelson Provincial Museum, Nelson Historical Society Collection
Moon Myth Busting Time!
Moon Myth Busting Time!
Think you know everything about our Moon? Take our myth busting challenge with your friends and see who's right!
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