chronicling the universe

Garrett is currently a little (or a lot) obsessed with outer space. He spends his days devouring his books, streaming Netflix documentaries, and even catching up on current events on the topic, then spewing forth to me all of the random facts now filling his brain.

In fact, let me go grab Garrett so he can dictate some of the things he's learned.

Me: "Hey, Garrett, tell me some things you've learned about outer space."

Garrett: "Um, okay. Let me see.....

"Do you know what the gas planets are? Well, I'll tell you: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.

"The Kuiper Belt is a place where you can find objects like huge asteroids and comets.

"The moon called Callisto sometimes changes into different colors. Sometimes it changes into green with yellow dots. And sometimes the color changes to brown with white dots. But I don't know why it changes colors. Callisto belongs to the giant planet called Jupiter.

"Mercury is close to the sun. It orbits the sun faster than any other planet. It only takes 88 days to orbit the sun.

"The moon Titan belongs to the planet Saturn. The surface is covered with ice.

"Vesta is an asteroid. It is the hugest asteroid in the solar system. And a space craft called Dawn took pictures of it.

"Venus is the brightest and the hottest planet in the solar system. It has an atmosphere. The clouds hold in heat like a blanket and that makes Venus very hot."

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. It's dizzying, not to mention pretty fascinating, just how much information he's absorbed.

And then, besides sharing that information with anyone who will listen, he assigns himself homework-like projects. A few days ago he created a "bulletin board" with paragraphs written in his own words and accompanying drawings of a few of the planets.

Currently he's working on a giant book of every planet's moons.

He's made it very clear, both by his words and his actions, that when he grows up, he wants to be a scientist who studies space. I hope that he does.