The Earth's closest neighbor is the moon. It orbits our planet once every 27.3 days. Because it is so close, it is the only space object that a human has ever walked on, other than Earth of course. One of the important benefits of our relationship with the moon is the tides it causes. It's one of the first objects that can spark a kid's interest in astronomy because it can be clearly seen with the human eye.
Then there's our sun. The gap between our home and the sun is very large. 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. The sun provides both light and heat to the planet. Most people don't realize that the sun accounts for around 98% of all the mass in the solar system. Think about how small a person is compared to that.
Our sun and solar system reside in a galaxy called the Milky Way. It's full of space stuff. But most of the galaxy is empty nothingness. That's a lot of nothing because our galaxy is 100,000 light years across and 3,000 light years deep. We're somewhere in the neighborhood of 30,000 light years from galactic central core. Even with all that space there are about 100 billion stars in the Milky Way. The galaxy's name comes from the many stars near the center. From Earth it
You can find a wealth of resources for astronomy for kids on the internet. In fact there are many star charts, charting programs, images, videos, and other resources .
Visit author's blog on Astronomy http://astronomyforeveryone.blogspot.com for more info.
