Sunrise, Sunset, Sunrise, Sunset

This weeks assignment is to write our feelings and observations about a sunrise or a sunset. Oh do I have some feelings about them!! We could do one or the other and since I am NEVER up to watch a sunrise, I quickly crossed that off. For the past 5 years I have seen the sunset every day. Ok not everyday but most days. I am pretty sure our family room window is perfectly aligned with the sun's setting path, because most days that is how I see it and all its "splendor". What surprises me most about this, is that I see even when the sky is cloudy and gray and have not seen the sun most of the day. That is because when the sun sets it gets lower and lower out of the atmosphere and shines/blinds me for a good 2 hours as it sets. So I pretty much hate sunsets and refuse to look at one for fun or for school. I see the effects of it every day EVEN when I close the blinds it still comes in. IT IS COMING IN RIGHT NOW as I type..... Another thing I hate about the sunset and when it rises for that matter. Is the fact that it blinds you when you drive!! How dangerous is that!?!?!?! I am convinced the sun is out to get us... If it dies we die... It annoys us sometimes. But we need it, so how can something we need so much cause us so much annoyances ??? To sum it up... I hate the sun but we all need it and it is forced upon me even when I don't care for it... I did not even get into sunburns, yet another reason to hate the sun......

Observation Project #1

Due to the fact of the inversion and new moon I could not see any stars or the moon, so I decided to do a internet project. I really did try to go out a few times and even looked up on the internet to see what phase the moon was in.... It will be hard to see until next week! The project I chose was to look up different space missions to each of the planets, our sun, and an asteroid. After looking at the assignment paper again, I wonder why our moon was not included, I know there have been a few mission there.

I was surprised to learn about how many space crafts we have sent up and for whatever reason they were unsuccessful. How frustrating is it to spend millions of dollars and years working on something only to have it break and be destroyed within seconds of taking orbit?? Never the less NASA has continued to build and have successful missions. All of my info can be found at a NASA web site detailing all of past, present and future missions. On a side note NASA takes advantage of using different missions to visit multiple planets, moons, and whatever they can that is why some have the same info.

The Sun: I was surprised to learn how many missions included gathering info about the sun. We can not obviously send anything to the sun with out it getting destroyed, so when ever they can get close to it they try to collect data. Thats is what they did on the Genesis Mission (2001-08) It collected solar winds from the sun to study. After collecting everything it returned to earth and landed in the Utah desert. Which I thought was cool because I live in Utah. Now the solar winds are being studied and learning tons from it.



Pretty much all the other missions to other planets have been to collect different samples of the atomosphere, dirt, air, and this and that. Or to map out as much of the landscape as possible. That is cool in all but I don't really want to blog about each mission to each planet... and study for my test and this. I will share my favorite mission of the whole project.

Voyager 2: It was lunched in 1977, before I was born CRAZY. I has been traveling all those years and is still going collecting data! WOW that is pretty dang awesome to have a machine built in 1977 that is still going strong..... But it did find some cool things about Neptune, like 3 new rings and 6 new moons. I hope any of you reading click on the links on the page to learn more about this and the other missions. I could not write everything about all the missions, so I just wrote about some highlights and things I thought were cool!


Next Project: I am leaning towards writing about a sunset or sunrise... I have beef with both of those things. And because I have YET to see the moon in like a month.....