Our Solar System and Beyond

Duration: Approximately 35 minutes

The state-of-the-art Morrison Planetarium uses the latest scientific data and visualization techniques to chart your course through outer space. This show is exclusively for student groups, and is presented live by Planetarium staff.

During this show your students will become virtual space scientists who will examine the different layers that compose the worlds of our solar system. Then, they will jet off to other planets outside our solar system and apply their new understanding of what makes a planet tantalizingly Earth-like, or shockingly different. The presentation will touch on the following topics:

• composition of Earth, including:
  • Earth’s interior (metallic core, lithosphere)
  • Habitable surface (solid crust, hydrosphere, biosphere)
  • Local space environment (atmosphere, magnetosphere)

• How a planet’s structure is uncovered and how it allows us to understand the change over time the planet has experienced.

• The dawn of the age of exoplanets and how their discovery has allowed us to better understand the worlds of our solar system

The planetarium shows are designed to support some aspects the Next Generation Science Standards. This activity is just one of many that could help prepare your students to meet the performance expectations.

Disciplinary Core Ideas, Middle School

• The History of Planet Earth - ESS1.C
  • The geologic time scale interpreted from rock strata provides a way to organize Earth’s history. Analyses of rock strata and the fossil record provide only relative dates, not an absolute scale. 
  • Tectonic processes continually generate new ocean sea floor at ridges and destroy old sea floor at trenches.
• Earth's Systems - ESS2.A
  • All Earth processes are the result of energy flowing and matter cycling within and among the planet’s systems. This energy is derived from the sun and Earth’s hot interior. The energy that flows and matter that cycles produce chemical and physical changes in Earth’s materials and living organisms.