Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Featured Badge - Astronomer

This month our Featured Badge is the Astronomer. Cubs and Scouts have recently been doing activities related to astronomy. For example, some of the Cubs made a solar system mobile, and the Scouts did a space quiz.

Astronomy is a fascinating subject; here are just a few facts about the Solar System the Scouts learned last week: The Sun is much, much bigger than the other planets, in fact it accounts for 99.8% of the mass of the Solar System (and Jupiter accounts for most of the rest). A Venus day is longer than a Venus year. Mars has the highest mountain in the Solar System, Olympus Mons, which is three times the height of Mount Everest. The Earth would fit twice in Jupiter’s Red Spot. Saturn’s rings are about 250,000km in diameter but less than 1km thick. And Pluto takes 90,550 days to go round the Sun, so it was last in its current position in 1758 (the year Horatio Nelson was born). You can find these and more astonishing facts about our Solar System at http://www.nineplanets.org/ .

If you’re a Cub or Scout and this is a subject that interests you, there’s a badge available. (Check out what you need to do for the Cub version and for the Scout version.)

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