Astronomy Online

Regardless of how far along you’re in your class as a newbie astronomer, there is always one fundamental moment that we all return to. That is that very first moment that we went out where you could really see the cosmos well and you took in the night sky. For town dwellers, this could be a revelation as surpassing as if we discovered aliens living among us. Many of us have no idea the massive panorama of lights that dot a clear night sky when there are no city lights to interfere with the view.

Sure we all love the enhanced experience of studying the sky using binoculars and various sizes and powers of telescopes. But I bet you can recollect as a kid that first time you saw the fully displayed clear night sky with all the fantastic constellations, meters and comets moving about and an exposure of dots of light far to countless to ever count.

The easiest way to recapture the wonder of that moment is to go out in the country with a child of your own or one who hasn’t had this experience and be there at that moment when they gaze up and say that awfully tough word that is the sole one that may summarize the feelings they are having viewing that wonderful sky. That word is – “Wow”.

Probably the most phenomenal fact about what that child is looking at that is also the thing that is hardest for them to understand is the sheer enormity of what is above them and what it represents. The very fact that almost up there in the sky is another star or astronomical body that is massively bigger that Earth itself, not by twice or ten times but by factors of hundreds and thousands, can be a mind blowing idea to children. Children have enough difficulty imagining the dimensions of earth itself, far less something on such a grand scope as outer space.

But when it comes to astronomy, we do better when we fall into deeper and deeper levels of shock at what we see up there in the night sky. Some superb facts about what the kids are taking a look at can add to the goose bumps they are already having as they gaze eyes skyward. Facts like…

*    Our sun is part of a big universe called the Milky Way that consists of one hundred billion stars just like it or bigger. Show them that one hundred bn. is 100,000,000,000 and you will se some jaws drop for sure.

* The milky was is only one of tens of universes every one of galaxies each of which has billions of stars in them as well. In fact, the Milky Way is one of the to drive across the Milky Way, it would take you 100,000 years. But you can’t get there driving the road limit. You need to drive five trillion, eight hundred million miles a year to get all the way across that fast.

* Scientists work out the Milky Way is fourteen bn. years old.

These small fun facts should get a pretty enthusiastic consultation going about the origins of the universe and about the possibility of space travel or if there are life on other planets. You can challenge the kids to work out that if each star in the Milky Way supported 9 planets and if only one of them was inhabitable like earth is, what are the chances that life would exist on one of them? I suspect you’ll see some genuine excitement when they try and run those numbers.

Such discussion can be fun, exciting, and full of queries. Do not be too hasty to shut down their imaginations as this is the birth of a lifetime love of astronomy that they are experiencing. And if you were there that first moment when they saw that night sky, you will re-experience your own great moment when you was a child. And it might set off a whole new excitement about astronomy in you all over again.

Visit planet-facts.com for more information about planets and our solar system. Along the way, check out facts about Venus.