The Real Size Of Space

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Wednesday, June 24th, 2009 Subscribe To Our Feed

Irrespective of how far along you’re in your class as a beginner astronomer, there is always one fundamental moment that we all go back to. That is that very first moment that we went out where you could really see the cosmos well and you took in the night sky. For town dwellers, this may be a revelation as surpassing as if we discovered aliens living among us. The majority of us haven’t a clue the vast panorama of lights that dot a clear night sky when there are no town lights to mess with the view.

Sure we all love the augmented experience of studying the sky using binoculars and numerous sizes and powers of telescopes. But I bet you can remember as a child that very first time you saw the totally displayed clear night sky with all the fantastic constellations, meters and comets moving about and an exposure of dots of light far to numerous to ever count.

The easiest way to recapture the wonder of that moment is to go out in the country with a child of your own or one who hasn’t had this experience and be there at that moment when they gaze up and say that very powerful word that is the only one that may summarise the feelings they are having viewing that magnificent sky. That word is - “Wow”.

Probably the most phenomenal fact about what that child is having a look at that is also the thing that is hardest for them to grasp is the sheer enormity of what is above them and what it represents. The very fact that almost up there in the sky is another star or astronomical body that is hugely bigger that Earth itself, not by twice or 10 times but by factors of hundreds and thousands, could be a mind blowing idea to children. Youngsters have enough trouble imagining the size of earth itself, a lot less something on such a grand scope as outer space.

But when it comes to astronomy, we do better when we fall into deeper and deeper levels of shock at what we see up there in the night sky. Some wonderful facts about what the children are looking at can add to the goose bumps they are already having as they gawk eyes skyward. Facts like…

* Our sun is an element of a big universe called the Milky Way that consists of one hundred billion stars just like it or bigger. Show them that one hundred billion Is 100,000,000,000 and you may se some jaws drop for sure.

* The milky was is only one of tens of billions of which has billions of which has billions of stars in them as well. an example of the Milky Way is an example of the small galaxies.

* If you needed drive across the Milky Way, it would take you 100,000 years. But you won’t get there driving the road limit. You have to drive five trillion, eight hundred million miles a year to get all the way across that fast.

* Scientists figure out the Milky Way is fourteen bln Years old.

These little fun facts should get a pretty enthusiastic consultation going about the origins of the universe and about the chance of space travel or if there are life on other planets. You can challenge the kids to calculate that if each star in the Milky Way supported 9 planets and if only one of them was habitable like earth is, what are the chances that life would exist on one of them? I think you will see some genuine excitement when they try and run those numbers.

Such discussion can be fun, exciting, and full of questions. Don’t be too hasty to close down their imaginations as this is the birth of a lifelong love of astronomy that they are experiencing. And if you were there that first moment when they saw that night sky, you may re-experience your own great moment when you was a kid. And it’d set off a totally new excitement about astronomy in you all over again.

To learn more about the nine planets in the solar system, visit planet-facts.com. Also, make sure to take a look at facts about the planet Venus.

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