Astronomy For Kids

Astronomy for Kids

Astronomy is a serious science. And as with many things, even very serious things, people often get an early start. There are a lot of resources for astronomy for kids who are interested in the planets, the solar system, the universe and everything else that’s part of this exciting science. A number of astronomy subjects interest kids. These include the solar system, planets, comets, meteorites, asteroids, stars, the sun, galaxies and of course our closest neighbor in space, the moon.

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 one of the first objects that can spark a kid’s interest in astronomy because it can be clearly seen with the human eye.

Let’s move to the sun. Earth is quite far from the sun. The distance varies between about 146 million kilometers and 152 million kilometers. That’s because Earth’s orbit around the sun isn’t a circle, it’s an ellipse. Without the sun there would be no life on Earth. The sun provides both light and heat to the planet. A little known fact is that the sun contains about 98% of the mass in the solar system. Talk about the big bully on the block.

Our own galaxy is 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’s a lot of nothing because our galaxy is 100,000 light years across and 3,000 light years deep. Our sun is over 30,000 light years from the center of the galaxy. Even with all that space there are about 100 billion stars in the Milky Way. In fact the galaxy takes its name from the appearance of the band of stars that shine from the main section of the galaxy. It looks like a pool of liquid, thus the name ?Milky Way.? It’s a spiral galaxy, one of four major types of galaxies in the universe. The others are elliptical, lenticular and irregular.

There is a lot of information about astronomy for kids on the Internet. From dictionaries and encyclopedic references, to programs that show different planets, solar systems and objects right on the computer, there’s more information than a kid would ever read.