Astronomy For Kids

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Friday, January 9th, 2009 Subscribe To Our Feed

Astronomy is a serious science. And as with many things, even very serious things, people often get an early start. Astronomy for kids is a thought provoking pursuit that can teach them about the sciences in general. Kids naturally gravitate to many aspects of astronomy. Movies like Star Wars only serve to increase this attraction.

The moon is Earth’s only satellite. It orbits our planet once every 27.3 days. Because it is so close, it is the only space object that a human has ever walked on, other than Earth of course. The moon is important for the Earth because it causes the tides through gravitational forces between the Earth and the moon. It’s brightness in the night sky attracts many children to learn more about it and the overall subject of astronomy.

Let’s move to the sun. The gap between our home and the sun is very large. We are between 91 and 94 million miles from the sun. The reason for the variance is Earth’s elliptical orbit. Life on Earth is only possible because of the sun. Important elements such as light and heat come from the sun. A little known fact is that the sun contains about 98% of the mass in the solar system. Think about how small a person is compared to that.

Our own galaxy is the Milky Way. Like all other galaxies it’s a collection of gas, dust, stars and planets. Even with all this stuff to fill it, it’s mostly empty. That means most of 3,000 light years high by 100,000 light years wide, the size of our galaxy, is empty. The center of our galaxy is about 30,000 light years from Earth. Even with all that space there are about 100 billion stars in the Milky Way. 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. There are four types of galaxies – elliptical, lenticular, irregular and like the Milky Way, spiral.

Astronomy for kids is well covered online. In fact there are so many star charts, charting programs, images, videos, and other resources that a kid would be a senior citizen before seeing all of it.

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