From the category archives:

Earth and Beyond

Wordless Wednesday – Responsible Fire Management

February 1, 2012 Earth and Beyond

We have a bush block in central Australia, so fire management is extremely important. It’s relatively cool and raining at the moment, so it’s time to deal with last year’s growth that is this year’s fire hazard.

Star Answers

December 13, 2011 Earth and Beyond

I‘m back! Did you miss me? Turns out that when you have ‘minor surgery’ you should listen to the ‘surgery’ bit and not so much of the ‘minor.’ I’m recovering nicely, but I’m also starting the round of Christmas relative visits with children but without husband, so posts may be irregular. I do remember that [...]

Quiz – The Star Edition

December 6, 2011 Earth and Beyond

Twinkle, twinkle, little star. What is the main sequence? Will our sun die as a supernova? Why do stars twinkle? Are the stars in constellations ‘related’? And what do you know about the picture? Answers hopefully on Friday!

Wordless Wednesday – A Day

November 30, 2011 Earth and Beyond

This is something I’ve been trying to do for ages, either life gets in the way or the day is deadly boring. Most photos are half an hour apart, the evening gets closer and the last sunset shots are only a couple of minutes. For a camera set up on a tripod there’s a worrying [...]

Curiosity Found the Cat?

November 28, 2011 Earth and Beyond

NASA has successfully launched another mission to Mars with their biggest ever rover, Curiosity. Curiosity is the size of a car and the mission is the Mars Science Laboratory. Technically Curiosity is not searching for life, but it is assessing whether or not the Martian environment has been (or is?) suitable for life. The main [...]

Weather Answers

November 25, 2011 Earth and Beyond

1. La Nina means ‘the girl’ and is the companion or opposite of El Nino, the boy. The names come from South America and originally El Nino wasn’t literal – it was named because it tended to arrive at Christmas and the reference is to Christ. They are part of the Southern Oscillation climate pattern that [...]

Quiz – The Weather Edition

November 21, 2011 Earth and Beyond

I know I spoke about weather last week, but we’re in the build-up. This is a uniquely tropical season that can be a lot of fun but also an enormous pain. It’s getting hotter and stickier, the clouds are grey and the lightning is pretty. The blackouts are annoying. So we think about the weather [...]

Creating Books

November 17, 2011 Activities

Both the girls love being read to, and big girl is reading. Of course this means little girl needs to as well, she’s at the stage where she can identify pictures and follow a pattern to ‘read’ to us and thinks it’s the best thing ever. She’s also starting to draw recognisably and loves making [...]

Water Answers

November 4, 2011 Earth and Beyond

How much do you know about water? Check back to the quiz for the questions. 1. Generally the solid form of something is heavier than the liquid because it’s packed together more tightly and there’s more in it. But ice is less dense than water, which means for the same volume there are [...]