Astronomy For Teens.

By Colin Jones | July 12, 2009

Astronomy is a very exact branch of science, although a lot of people become interested in it when they are very young. Astronomy is a thought-provoking pursuit that can show children about the other sciences in general. Some astronomical subjects interest kids and movies like Star Wars and they serve to increase this interest.

Our only natural satellite is called the moon. Its orbit 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 huge, although it fluctuates 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 provides 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!

Our planet 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, just empty space. That means that most of its volume, 3,000 light years high by 100,000 light years diameter, the volume of our galaxy, is nothingness.

Our Earth is situated somewhere in the vicinity of 30,000 light years from the very centre 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 portion of it.

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

There is a lot of information on astronomy on the Internet that is fit for children: it ranges 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 out there than a child could ever get through.

Fascinated by astronomy? Then please visit our website at: http://astronomy.the-real-way.com

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