One of the greatest accomplishments of science is that it has allowed us to know so much about our home planet and its place in the cosmos. There is much to learn about the planet Earth. In Earth and space science, we spent half of the year learning about this average-yet-no-so-average terrestrial planet. What are the processes that shape the place we live on? What is the Earth "made" of? What creates mountains and oceans and valleys? As we learn about the stories told in rocks and landscapes, we gain a new appreciation of nature.
We go from looking below our feet to looking above. From this spinning spheroid, we can see a sky full of stars, galaxies, clusters, and planets. With telescopes, we gaze even further and find objects so bizarre and wondrous that not even the most creative of poets and storytellers could have conjured them: quasars, neutron stars, supernovae, bursts of gamma rays, and even the first snapshot of a developing universe. Students learn about these strange inhabitants as we study everything from classical astronomy to the most modern understanding of space and time.
We go from looking below our feet to looking above. From this spinning spheroid, we can see a sky full of stars, galaxies, clusters, and planets. With telescopes, we gaze even further and find objects so bizarre and wondrous that not even the most creative of poets and storytellers could have conjured them: quasars, neutron stars, supernovae, bursts of gamma rays, and even the first snapshot of a developing universe. Students learn about these strange inhabitants as we study everything from classical astronomy to the most modern understanding of space and time.