VISITING AN OBSERVATORY TO LEARN ABOUT PLANETS USING EXPERIMENTS.

Last 5th February we went on a school trip to visit an observatory that is located in Yebes, a small village which is very close to our town. This is a very interesting place where people work trying to observe and to get new data about the space. We went there by bus. Once we got there a man who works in the observatory was waiting for us, his name is Raúl.

Raúl told us very interesting things. He explained us the difference between a telescope and a radio telescope. With a telescope we can see planets however, with a radio telescope we can know if a planet has or doesn’t have air, if it is cold or if it is hot. This observatory has three different radio telescopes: Radomo, which was built in 1976; Aries, which was built in 2005 and Jorge Juan, which was built in 2012.

We also learnt about gaseous and rocky planets, I really enjoyed it because I did not know which planets were made of gas and which ones were made of rock and now I know it: Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are gaseous planets whereas the Earth, Venus, Mars and Mercury are rocky planets.

I was also really impressed by the size of the star Aldevaran, if you compare it with the Sun, Aldevaran is huge and the Sun is really tiny, you cannot even see it.

We learnt about the way in which rays from the Sun get to Earth, sometimes they are vertical and sometimes they are leaning, that is why in summer, winter, spring and autumn the temperature is different.

I had always thought that in the Milky Way there was a hole but what I did not know was its location, it is just in the middle of the Milky Way and once you get there you cannot go out.

We also learnt that the Earth has a magnetic field. This magnetic field is called Magnetosphere, it protects us from being burnt. Finally we watched some videos about the space.

It was a very interesting trip. We learnt very interesting things about space. I really enjoyed it!

By Irene Miguel and Gabriela Rabadán
 4th B