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

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.

Let’s move on to the sun. Earth is quite far from the sun, although the distance 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.

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 for kids on the Internet and kids could easily spend hours wrapped in detailed 3D representations of the universe around us.

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