Astronomy is a very exact science, although many people get involved with it when they are quite young. Astronomy is a thought-provoking hobby that can teach children about the sciences in general. A number of astronomical subjects interest kids and movies like Star Wars and they only serve to increase this attraction.

The Earth’s closest neighbour is the moon. Its path around the Earth takes just 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 attracts many children to want to study more about it and the subject of astronomy in general.

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 delivers 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.

We’re situated somewhere in the vicinity 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 types of galaxies: elliptical, lenticular, irregular and, like the Milky Way, spiral.

There is a lot of information on astronomy on the Internet that is suitable for children: from dictionaries and encyclopaedic references to programs that show the paths 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.

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