Astronomy in the classroom

Put the solar system on the projector. The drawing is the worksheet. Free, no sign-up, nothing installed. Part of the classroom hub; the full catalog is on lesson plans by topic and grade.

What this is

Every tool below runs in a browser tab on a school machine, with nothing installed and nobody signed in. They are not animations of what space looks like — the positions are computed from the real orbits when the page loads, and every page states plainly what its picture exaggerates. That last part is the lesson more often than the picture is.

The link is the lesson plan. Place, date, zoom and speed all ride in the address, so one link puts the projector and thirty student screens on the same sky — and a link you send home on Friday opens the same view on a kitchen laptop.

Submit a lesson plan Or send the questions your class asked →

On the projector

Everything here is already built. Open it, full-screen it, and teach.

Sun, Earth & MoonYour town marked on the turning Earth, the daylight half, and the moon at its true angle from the sun. A day, a week or a month per drag.

Solar system simulatorThe planets on their real orbits, from the to-scale Earth and Moon out to Neptune. This is the planets-and-moons simulator — there is no second one.

The planetsOne page per world in orbital order, each with a drawn globe. Reading first, then the simulator.

Rocket launchesWhy a Mars window opens every 26 months. Geometry, not a date off a poster.

EclipsesEvery lunar eclipse, solved — and why there is not one every month.

Lessons that run on them

Timed, step-by-step, every step a link that opens the exact view. 5 of them, and the full grid has the rest.

Grades K–2The planet race — 20 min · 1-ESS1-1

Grades 3–4The solar system, gravity and moons — 45 min · 5-ESS1-2

Grades 5–6The 50-minute slip — measure it — 40 min · 5-ESS1-2

Grades 7–8Eight minutes old: light, and distance measured in time — 45 min · MS-ESS1-3

High school & upLaunch windows: aim where it will be — 50 min · HS-ESS1-4

The one that surprises a class most costs nothing and needs no screen: shrink the Earth to a 16 mm marble, walk the moon 48 cm down the corridor as a 4.4 mm peppercorn, and leave the 1.7-metre sun 188 metres away at the far end of the building. The simulator's scale card computes those figures from its own drawing, so they cannot drift from the picture the class just watched.

The other two doors

Earth scienceWhy the day/night line leans, why summer is tilt and not distance, and what the moon does to the sea.

TimeTime zones, 12- and 24-hour clocks, the line where the date jumps — time as geography, not as a countdown.

Every lessonthe full grid: five grade bands, seven topics, every one a timed sequence.

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