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Astronomy is a very serious branch of science, although many people get involved with it when they are very young. Astronomy is a thought-provoking hobby that can teach children about the other sciences in general. Some astronomical subjects inspire kids and movies like Star Wars and they 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 near, 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 seas’ 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.

Consider Sol, our own star, the sun. The distance between our home and the sun is very large, although it varies from 91 to 94 million miles. The reason for the variance is the Earth’s elliptical orbit. If there were no sun, we wouldn’t be alive. The sun delivers both light and heat to the planets. A little known fact is that the sun contains about 98% of the mass in the solar system. That is massive!

The Earth is in the galaxy called the Milky Way. Like all other galaxies, it’s a very large collection of gas, dust, stars and planets. Most of the area in a galaxy is filled with nothing, only empty space. In other words, most of its volume, 3,000 light years high by 100,000 light years diameter, the size of our galaxy, is nothingness.

Our Earth is located somewhere in the vicinity of 30,000 light years from the central core of our galaxy. The emptiness is broken up by over 100 billion stars. In fact, the galaxy was named after the thick group of stars in the main section of it.

It looks like a pool of liquid, which is why it was called the Milky Way. There are four sorts of galaxies: elliptical, lenticular, irregular and, like the Milky Way, spiral.

There is a great deal of information on astronomy on the Internet that is fit for children: from dictionaries and encyclopaedic references to programs that show the orbits of the different planets, solar systems and objects right on the computer’s monitor! In deed, there’s more information than a child could ever get through.

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