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.

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. Gravity between the moon and Earth causes the tides. It’s brightness in the night sky attracts many children to learn more about it and the overall subject of astronomy.

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.

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 wide, the size of our galaxy, is empty. We’re somewhere in the neighborhood 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 looks like a pool of liquid, thus the name Milky Way. There are four types of galaxies: elliptical, lenticular, irregular and, like the Milky Way, spiral.

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.

Related Articles