Directions At The North Pole

Did you know that if you stand at the North Pole, there is only one way to go: South?
If you stand at the very top of the earth, it is not possible to go North, because you are already at the northernmost point of the earth. You can't go East or West either, because since the pole is only a point you'd walk right off earth, and there's no direction in space technically you won't be going anywhere. So the only direction left is Down (a.k.a. South). Once you've stepped (even if it's a milimetre) closer to South you'd be able to go East or West.
Basically whenever you go in a direction you're going in a circle (if you walk in a straight line from the south pole to the north pole, that's half a circle. Then if you go back to the south pole it'll be a full circle. Get it?). It's just that some of the circles are bigger than others. Eg. If you are one meter away from the north pole and go from East to West your circle will be very small since you're only one meter away. By contrast, if you go from East to West on the Equator, your circle will be huge.
Hope that made sense. It helps if you have a picture to look at while you're reading this. The same applies to the South Pole.

Time Travel!

Did you know that it's possible to see things the way they were in the past? It is - but the only things you can see that way (as far as I know) are stars.
Because some of the stars we see are so far away, even light takes a long time to travel from there to here. Sometimes it takes up to thousands of years! (See this article on how we see if you don't remember - otherwise this post would seem confusing and unrealistic: http://www1.curriculum.edu.au/sciencepd/readings/ligh_how.htm#1) So that means that the stars we see are actually the way they looked a long time ago.
Amazing, huh?

Another Constellation Video

Here is a good constellation video. First it explains a bit about the origin of constellations, and then moves on to more technical stuff (why we see them, etc.), and last reminds you to read up on your Greek mythology so you know why the constellations are named after the characters.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXeEAQtC75g

Reliable Information About Space

Well, all my posts have reliable and accurate information (at least on the day I published it), but these sites are mostly from NASA and CSA so they should confirm everything.

http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/ Easy-to-understand information about the planets, solar system, etc.
http://www.nasa.gov/ National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
http://spaceflightnow.com/ Includes live coverage of space shuttle landings.
http://www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/default.asp Canadian Space Agency.

The Constellations

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AskaziHAseA

Above is a really good video about the stars, constellations, and the universe. Astronomical information in general.

And if you're wondering why I'm putting so much space-related stuff on here all of a sudden, it's because our class is studying Astronomy in Science.

An... Interesting Constellation Video

Here is a slightly strange video about the constellations. It's pretty accurate (I think) up to the end, where there is a totally fake constellation called "Al Roker", who is some meteorologist guy, so I don't know why that's there. Unfortunately this video is from Google Videos which is going to remove all its videos on April 29 (why?!) so I'm not sure if this video will sitll be viewable after that. And the guy that published this video was called MoldyToaster which is a pretty uncommon name.

Astronomy Picture Of The Day

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

Click the link above to see a beautiful new astronomy-related picture every day! It also includes a short description of the picture.