Astronomy For Kids

Astronomy is a serious science. It's a good hobby for younger people, too. This exciting science can provide hours of learning, that's why astronomy for kids is popular. Kids naturally gravitate to many aspects of astronomy. These include the moon, the stars and far distant galaxies.

The moon is Earth's only satellite. It orbits our planet once every 27.3 days. Being so near, it has hosted the only human footsteps on a space object other than the Earth. 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.

Then there's our sun. Earth is quite far from the sun. We are between 91 and 94 million miles from the sun. The reason for the variance is Earth's elliptical orbit. Without the sun there would be no life on Earth. Our light and heat comes from the sun. 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.

We live in the Milky Way Galaxy. It's full of space stuff. Most of the area in a galaxy is filled with nothing, just empty space. At over 100,000 light years wide and 3,000 light years high, that means the galaxy contains a whole lot of nothing. The center of our galaxy is about 30,000 light years from Earth. 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. People thought it looked like a stream of milk, so called it the Milky Way. It's a spiral galaxy, one of four major types of galaxies in the universe. The others are elliptical, lenticular and irregular.

You can find a wealth of resources for astronomy for kids on the world wide web. 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.