Astronomy is a very exact science, although many people become interested in it when they are very young. Astronomy is a thought-provoking pursuit that can teach children about the sciences in general. A number of astronomical subjects inspire kids and movies like Star Wars and they only serve to increase this attraction.
The Earth’s nearest neighbour is the moon. Its orbit around the Earth takes just over twenty-seven days to complete. Mankind has only ever set foot on the Earth and the moon. The gravity between the moon and Earth causes the tides. Its brightness in the night sky attracts many children to want to study more about it and the subject of astronomy in general.
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 is 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 holds 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!
The Earth is in the galaxy called the Milky Way. Like all other galaxies, it’s a very large collection of gas, dust, stars and planets. Most of the area in a galaxy is filled with nothing, just empty space. In other words, most of its volume, 3,000 light years high by 100,000 light years diameter, the size of our galaxy, is empty.
We’re situated somewhere in the neighbourhood of 30,000 light years from the very centre 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, which is why it was named the Milky Way. There are four sorts of galaxies: elliptical, lenticular, irregular and, like the Milky Way, spiral.
There is a great deal of information about astronomy on the Internet that is fit for children: from dictionaries and encyclopaedic references to programs that show the orbits of the different planets, solar systems and objects right on the computer’s monitor! In fact, there’s more information than a child could ever get through.
