Astronomy For Children.
Astronomy is a very serious science, although many people get involved with it when they are very young. Astronomy for kids is a thought provoking pursuit that can teach them about the sciences in general. A number of astronomy subjects interest kids and movies like Star Wars only serve to increase this attraction.
The Earth’s closest neighbour is the moon. Its path around the Earth takes just over twenty seven days to complete. Mankind has only ever walked on the Earth and the moon. Gravity between the moon and Earth causes the tides. It’s brightness in the night sky attracts many children to learn more about it and the overall subject of astronomy.
Consider Sol, our own star, the sun. The distance between our home and the sun is very large, although it varies between 91 and 94 million miles. The reason for the variance is the Earth’s elliptical orbit. If there were no sun, we wouldn’t be alive. The sun provides both light and heat to the planet. A little known fact is that the sun contains about 98% of the mass in the solar system. What a hog.
Our sun and solar system reside in a galaxy called the Milky Way. Just as other galaxies, ours contains gas and clouds of dust, stars and planets and other space materials. Even with all this stuff to fill it, it’s mostly empty. That’s a lot of nothingness because our galaxy is 100,000 light years across and 3,000 light years deep. The center of our galaxy is about 30,000 light years from Earth. The nothingness is broken up by over 100 billion stars. The galaxy’s name comes from the many stars near the center. From Earth it looks like a Milky Way, a large pool of milk. Our galaxy is called a spiral galaxy as opposed to the other three main types which are elliptical, lenticular and irregular.
There is a lot of information about astronomy fit for children on the Internet. From dictionaries and encyclopedic references to programs that show different planets, solar systems and objects right on the computer! There’s more information than a child could ever read.
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