The Sun, Moon, & Earth

The Digital Story

Table of Contents

The Sun

The Moon

The Earth

Meet the Scientists Resources

The Sun

The sun is really a star. It is made up of many different gasses. It is 93,000,000 million miles away from the earth.

All of the planets in our solar system orbit the sun. Orbit means to go around an object in a circular path. It takes the earth 365 days to orbit the sun.

The sun is so large that over 1,000,000 earths could fit inside the sun.

The sun is the perfect distance away from the earth. The energy that the earth gets from the sun is perfect for life on earth. Without the sun, plants and animals could not survive on the earth.

Day and night occur on the earth because the earth is always spinning around. It is day on one side of the earth, while the other side of the earth is having night. It looks like the sun moves through our sky, but we get day and night because the earth is spinning.

Some people think we have different seasons on earth because of how far away the earth is from the sun. But that is not true. We have different seasons because the sun’s rays are more direct on certain parts of the earth at different times of the year.

The Earth

The earth orbits the sun. Orbit means to o around something in a circular path, but actually the earth’s path around the sun is more elliptical or oval shaped. It takes the earth 365 ¼ days to orbit the sun one time. Because of the extra ¼ of a day, every four years we add an extra day to the year. This is called a leap year.

The sun sets in the west and rises in the east.The sun never goes away, it’s just how the earth spins that creates day and night. The Earth rotates and the sun faces one side of the earth and the other side of the earth is in darkness.

The earth rotates. Rotate is another word for spin. It takes 24 hours for the earth to rotate one full time. This is why 1 earth day is 24 hours long.

The Moon

The moon orbits the earth. The moon is xxx,xxx miles away from the earth. It is xxx,xxx,xxx miles away from the sun.

The moon can appear differently every night to a person on the earth. It takes the moon about 27 days to orbit the earth. During this cycle, we can only see part of the moon that is lit up by the sun. The different looks are called the moon phases. The phases of the moon are new moon, waxing crescent, first quarter, waxing gibbous, full moon, waning gibbous, last quarter, and waning crescent.

There is no life on the moon. It is extremely hot during the day and extremely cold during the night. The temperature on the moon varies from -387 degrees Fahrenheit and 253 degrees Fahrenheit during the day. The moon does not have an atmosphere and the gravity is 1/6 that of Earths. The moon has many craters that cover the surface.

Neil Armstron was the first human to walk on the moon. He was an American astronaut and he landed on the moon on July 20, 1969. His famous saying was, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

Meet the Scientists:

Scientist Meow Meow Scientist Hoppy Scientist Cluck Cluck

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Resources Used