Fifth Grade
Worksheets
Stargazing
Can you find the Big Dipper in this drawing of Ursa Major, the Great Bear? (The stars in the "handle" of the dipper make up the bear's tail.)
Stars are large glowing balls of gases. I don't mean like the gas we put in cars. It's more like the gas we breathe, oxygen. Our sun is a star. It looks much brighter than the stars we see at night. That's because our sun is much closer to Earth than any other stars. The stars that we see shining in the night sky are very far away from Earth. The stars we see at night are large glowing balls of gases, just like our sun.
Long ago, people imagined that stars made pictures in the sky. Stories were told to explain these pictures, called constellations. The word "constellation" comes from two Latin words. The two words mean "stars" and "together." Constellations are groups of stars seen together that form a pattern. Eighty-eight constellations have been named.
