Astronomy is a very serious branch of science, although a lot of people get involved with it when they are very young. Astronomy is a thought-provoking hobby that can show children about the other sciences in general. Certain astronomical subjects interest kids and movies like Star Wars and they only increase this attraction.
The Earth’s closest neighbour is the moon. Its orbit around the Earth takes a little over twenty-seven days to complete. Mankind has only ever walked on the Earth and the moon. The gravity between the moon and Earth is responsible for the tides. Its brightness in the night sky encourages many children to want to learn more about it and the subject of astronomy in general.
Let’s move on to the sun. Earth is quite far from the sun, although the distance actually fluctuates between about 91 million miles and about 94 million miles. The reason for this variance is because of Earth’s elliptical orbit. Life on Earth is only possible because of the sun, which is our source of important elements such as light and heat. A little-known fact is that the sun contains about 98% of the mass of the whole solar system! Just think about how small a person is compared to that.
The Earth is in the galaxy called the Milky Way. Like all other galaxies, it’s a very large group 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 vicinity 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 resembles a pool of liquid, which is why it was called the Milky Way. There are four sorts of galaxies: elliptical, lenticular, irregular and, like our Milky Way, spiral.
There is a great deal of information about astronomy on the Internet that is suitable for children: it ranges 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 out there than a child could ever get through.
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