Astronomy is a very exact branch of science, although many people become interested in it when they are quite young. Astronomy is inspiring pursuit that can show children about the other sciences in general. Certain astronomical subjects inspire kids and movies like Star Wars and they only increase this interest.
Our only natural satellite is called the moon. Its path around the Earth takes just over twenty seven days to complete. Man’s knowledge being what it is and because the moon is so near, it is the only space object that mankind has ever set foot on, except for the Earth of course. The effects of gravity between the moon and Earth causes the seas’ tides. The moon is one of the first objects that sparks a child’s interest in astronomy because it can be clearly seen with the naked eye.
Consider Sol, our own star, the sun. The distance between our home and the sun is very large, although it varies from 91 to 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 planets. A little known fact is that the sun contains about 98% of the mass in the solar system. That is massive!
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 diameter, the size of our galaxy, is empty.
Our Earth is situated somewhere in the vicinity of 30,000 light years from the central core of our galaxy. The emptiness 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 resembles a pool of liquid, which is why it was called the Milky Way. There are four types of galaxies: elliptical, lenticular, irregular and, like the Milky Way, spiral.
There is a lot of information about astronomy that is fit for children on the Internet: from dictionaries and encyclopaedic references to programs that show different planets, solar systems and objects right on the computer’s monitor! In fact, there’s more information than a child could ever read.
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