February conjures up thoughts of Valentine's Day, President's Day and, depending on where you are, a snow day or two. In Los Angeles, February also brings an annual partnership between NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and LA's BEST, a Los Angeles-based afterschool enrichment program.
The main objective is for JPL engineers, scientists, business managers, outreach staff and educators to visit LA's BEST afterschool sites to share exciting topics in science, engineering and space exploration with students. One group from JPL's Office of Communications and Education led a "Space Web Editor for a Day" activity. Fourth and fifth graders selected their favorite space images and wrote captions explaining why they liked the images. They also prepped images and text for a web page. Their final product can be seen below.
Colorful Venusby Isabel -- I named it colorful Venus because its color is like a rainbow and I like all the colors of the rainbow.
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Rover Sits on Martian Hilltop by Adriana -- I picked Mars because it is cool but I think it is a little bit dangerous. I also like Mars because the dirt is the color brown and brown is my favorite color.
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The Sun's Heatby Anali -- I like this image because it looks interesting and I like the shiny things coming out of it. This image is red, and a little bit yellow. I love the color yellow.
Sun and Earthby Jonathan -- I choose this picture because it looks very interesting. The sun is yellow because the sun is hot and bright.
by Johnny -- I like it because it looks like a ball of fire in space. Fire comes out and spreads into space.
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Saturn's Interesting Moon, Enceladusby Eduardo -- You might see it is similar to an eclipse, which more or less happens on Earth. What I think, it is an Eclipse. Since Earth's eclipse is similar, Enceladus is my best guess.
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Blue Neptune by Natalia -- What I like about Neptune is that the color it has is blue. Blue is my favorite color. The shape of it reminds me of a round ball.
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3D Sun by Alexandria -- I like this picture because it looks like a big pink diamond and it heats us up.
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Moon Spongeby Jaime -- I like this image because it looks like a sponge.
by Virginia -- The moon gets heat from the sun and melts into the moon's surface. The moon may have low density.
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Water Whirlpoolby Ammerica -- I like this picture because it looks like floating water in space. I also like this picture because it's cool.
The Whirlpool Trap by Carlos -- It looks like a lot of stars connecting. The whirlpool looks so bright. To me, it looks like a tornado of ice and water.
by Jacqueline -- I picked the Whirlpool galaxy because it is like it is spinning around. It is blue, my favorite color. It is famous. I also like it because it is called Messier 51, named after Charles Messier.
by Juan -- I like this image because I could learn about this galaxy and where they found it.
by Maritza -- The Whirlpool galaxy is a famous spiral galaxy. The Whirlpool galaxy is also called Messier 51, named after Charles Messier. The Whirlpool's very bright spiral arms show areas of compressed dust and gas.
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To learn more about LA's BEST, go to
http://www.lasbest.org/ .
Students in LA's Best selected their favorite images and wrote captions as part of JPL's "Space Editor for a Day" activity. Image credit: NASA/JPL
