hw

1. Year 5 Homework: Literacy
Given out Wednesday 21st
September
To be handed in Monday 26th
September
This week, we have been learning how to summarise what each paragraph in a text is about.
Choose whether you will do Bronze, Silver or Gold.
Bronze:
1) Read the article below.
2) Decide what each paragraph is about.
3) Give each paragraph an appropriate subheading which tells the reader what it will be about.
Silver:
1) Read the article below.
2) Decide what each paragraph is about.
3) Write one or two sentences about each paragraph which sum up its main points.
Example:
Paragraph 1: The first paragraph in the article tells us that an exciting new map of a billion stars
has been made. It took 14 months and used a one-billion pixel camera.
Gold:
1) Read the article below.
2) Decide what each paragraph is about.
3) Write one or two sentences about each paragraph which sum up its main points.
4) Give each paragraph a subheading which is written in question form.
Example:
Paragraph 1:
Subheading: How many stars?
The first paragraph in the article tells us that an exciting new map of a billion stars has been
made. It took 14 months and used a one-billion pixel camera.
Challenge: Think of an appropriate, catchy headline for the whole article and write it here:
__________________________________________________________________________________

2. Paragraph 1
The most detailed map of the night sky ever produced, which pinpoints the locations
of more than one billion stars, was released today. The image is the result of 14
months of sky scanning by the European Space Agency’s Gaia satellite which carries
a one-billion pixel camera designed by British engineers.
Paragraph 2
Gaia is going to provide not only information about the stars in the sky but also about
the motion of the stars and information about how the stars formed. Gaia, which is
around 32 feet (10m) wide with its solar panels out stretched, sits in an observing
location nine million miles (11.5 million km) from Earth, from where it can slowly
spin and scan the sky. The satellite was launched 1,000 days ago and started its
scientific work in July 2014. Its array of powerful cameras have been designed by
Chelmsford-based technology specialists e2v and is are powerful they can measure
the diameter of a human hair at a distance of 620 miles (1000km). The cameras
work by picking up light and turning it into an electric signal which is then beamed to
Earth. The most powerful instrument on Nasa’s Hubble space telescope incorporates
two such cameras but Gaia has 106 meaning it can pick up far more data than
ever before.
Paragraph 3
“The beautiful map we are publishing today shows the density of stars measured by
Gaia across the entire sky, and confirms that it collected superb data during its first
year of operations,” said Timo Prusti, Gaia project scientist at ESA. The Milky Way is
a spiral galaxy, with most of its stars residing in a disc about 100 000 light-years
across and about 1000 light-years thick. This structure is visible in the sky as the
Galactic Plane – the brightest portion of this image –which runs horizontally and is
especially bright at the centre. Brighter regions on the map indicate denser
concentrations of stars, while darker regions correspond to patches of the sky where
fewer stars are observed. Darker regions across the Galactic Plane correspond to
dense clouds of interstellar gas and dust that absorb starlight along the line of sight.
The two bright objects in the lower right of the image are the Large and Small
Magellanic Clouds, two dwarf galaxies orbiting the Milky Way.
Paragraph 4
“Gaia is at the forefront of astrometry, charting the sky at precisions that have never
been achieved before,” said Alvaro Giménez, ESA’s Director of Science. “Today’s
release gives us a first impression of the extraordinary data that await us and that
will revolutionise our understanding of how stars are distributed and move across
our Galaxy.” The mission is also hoping to map thousands of new asteroids and
comets in the Solar System and seven thousand new planets in neighbouring star
systems. It is also hunting for exploding stars, called supernovae and distant galaxies.

3. Gaia will observe one billion stars about 70 times each over five years. That’s an
average of 40 million observations a day. However one billion stars is one per cent of
all the stars in the Milky Way. (From Telegraph online)