The Science of Astronomy For Kids


The science of Astronomy is interesting and varied. There are a lot of resources for it for kids who are interested in the planets, the solar system, the universe and everything else that's part of this exciting science. For children, many parts of it are magical and thus they are drawn towards the moon, the stars and far distant galaxies.

The moon is Earth's only satellite. It takes about 27 days to orbit the Earth. 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.

Then there's our sun. Earth is quite far from the sun. The distance fluctuates between about 91 million miles and about 94 million miles. That's because Earth's orbit around the sun isn't a circle, it's an ellipse. If there were no sun, we wouldn't be alive. Our light and heat comes from the sun. Over 98% of the total stuff in our solar system is in the sun. Think about how small a person is compared to that.

We live in the Milky Way Galaxy. It's full of space stuff. Even with all this stuff to fill it, it's mostly empty. 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. Even with all that space there are about 100 billion stars in the Milky Way. 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. 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. Kids could spend hours wrapped in detailed 3D representations of the universe around us.