Astronomy For Kids.
Posted by Colin Jones in Uncategorized, tags: astronomy, children, education, entertainment, environment, galaxy, guide to, hobbies, how to, other, outdoors, planets, science, stars, UncategorizedAstronomy is a serious science and as with many things, even very serious things, people often get in at an early age. This exciting science can provide hours of learning, that’s why astronomy is popular with kids. Kids naturally gravitate to many aspects of astronomy, including the moon, the stars and far distant galaxies.
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 close, 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 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 human eye.
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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