Astronomy For Teens.
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 nearest celestial body is the moon. Its circumnavigation of the Earth takes twenty seven days and a bit to complete. It is because it is so close, that it is the only space object that a human has ever walked on, other than the Earth of course. The moon is important for the Earth because it causes the tides through gravitational forces between the Earth and the moon. Because it’s close enough to see clearly with the naked eye, kids are often drawn to astronomy by it.
Then there’s our sun. Earth is quite far from the sun. The distance fluctuates between about 91 million miles and about 94 million miles, although these measurements are not completely accurate. They are inaccurate measurements, because the Earth orbits the sun in an uneven ellipse. Life on Earth is only possible because of the sun, because it provides us with important elements such as light and heat. It is not a well-known fact that the sun contains about 98% of all the mass available in the solar system. Think about how small a person is compared to that – it is truly imponderable!
We live in the galaxy called the Milky Way. Like all other galaxies it’s a collection of gas, dust, stars and planets. Most of the area in a galaxy is filled with nothing, just empty space. That means that most of its volume, 3,000 light years high by 100,000 light years wide, the size of our galaxy, is empty. We’re somewhere in the neighborhood of 30,000 light years from the central core of our galaxy. The nothingness is broken up by over 100 billion stars. In fact the galaxy was named for the thick group of stars in the main portion of it. It looks like a pool of liquid, thus the name Milky Way. There are four types of galaxies: elliptical, lenticular, irregular and, like the Milky Way, spiral.
You can find a wealth of resources concerning astronomy for teens on the world wide web. Kids could spend hours wrapped in detailed 3D representations of the universe around us.
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