Tuesday 6 May 2008

Moon With a View

Hello. Is there anybody out there?

Big, stormy mama Jupiter and her bright little moons hang out together, just like a proper family. The moons face their planet and circle her at different speeds, her tides and gravity steering their course. Just like a proper family.

My son is 'doing' Jupiter at school. He taught me that Jupiter has 63 moons. I looked for them in cyberspace. Apparently, humans have given them names. Lo is volcanic and covered in sulphur; Europa is icy and covered in water; Ganymede is the biggest moon we've found so far, and may have an ocean beneath its surface.

My daughter is 'doing' Neil Armstrong at school. Tomorrow she wants to take in a photo of his footprint on Earth's only moon. Why didn't we name that one too?

15 comments:

  1. Welcome back! Great to see you. Thanks for your visit and comments to mine.

    I never thought of why we didn't name our moon. Unless it's called "Man in the"!

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  2. GBS - you're back. Brilliant. Thanks for popping by and look forward to some good posts from you.

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  3. Hey you! Look who's posting! When is your son going to study Uranus? lol

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  4. Hi! I am so pleased to see you!
    Welcome back.
    Are you alright?

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  5. Yay! You're back!! Brilliant. Looking forward to reading you again.

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  6. Nice to see you're back in the blogosphere's orbit.

    I knew about Ganymede but didn't realise Jupiter had 63 moons. I'll have to look them up, of course.

    I believe Earth's moon was named after Keith Moon, the late drummer with Who, although I could be wrong as I didn't concentrate much when I was at school...

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  7. Lovely to see you've returned.
    Did Armstrong really walk on the moon? I'm just not sure anymore.

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  8. Hey, thanks :-)

    Groovy Mum, that made me splutter my coffee all over the keyboard - brilliant.

    Maggie, I'm awright, thank you!

    Dumdad, perhaps you had your walkman on, listening to The Who, when you 'did' astronomy at school.

    Frog, I like to think so, because it's a great story.

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  9. Welcome back .. you have been missed!

    Now you've made me wonder why its called Moon .. perhaps some early astronomer felt it was .. nah .. I amsure the term 'mooning' came much later in history .. or did it

    :-Daryl

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  10. Glad you're back! Interesting puzzler about not naming our moon. Hmm...

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  11. Welcome back. I can now see that you clearly have been spending the time changing the look of your blog and hoping that we wouldn't notice because of the time lapse. Looking good x

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  12. My nickname is 'Lo'... I can be somewhat volcanic too!

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  13. Welcome back!

    We 'did' the moon at school recently and we had real moon rocks! I don't know who was more excited - pupils or teachers!

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  14. Your children are really on a special voyage of discovery.

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  15. Welcome back GBS. I wonder how many of those moons are visible simutaneously on Jupiter

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