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The first time that you gaze up into the night sky and feel the wonder of the universe is the time when the majority of people, even the most revered professional astronomers, think back to if they think of their initial interest in the stars. It is normally a very special moment, when an adult took you by the hand, pointed at the sky and said: 'Look, that is the Pole Star'.
Country folk will almost certainly discover the night sky at an earlier time than city dwellers because the atmosphere over a city is usually so polluted that you cannot see the stars from below. There are two kinds of pollutants that prevent you from seeing the stars in a city, smoke and light. Street lights give off a corona that prevents you from seeing the weaker light from the stars beyond.
If you want to evoke that instant in your life, why not take a child out into the country to look at the stars one night? If you have a pair of binoculars, so much the better, but they are not vital. If you have forgotten which stars are which, take a book on the topic or a map of the night sky. These days you can download a map of the night's sky for the day that you want.
The night sky actually changes each night. The stars and the constellations do not move a lot, so you should not have too much difficulty finding them, but if a planet is passing by, it will be in another part of the sky every night, which is why it is useful to get an up-to-date map of the night sky for the date you would like to go star gazing.
One of the hardest concepts for a child (or anyone else for that matter to comprehend is the scale of the universe - the sheer size of it. Here are a couple of facts that will amaze most individuals:
1] Our Sun is a star in the galaxy known as the Milky Way and it has its own planets revolving about it. However, there are estimated to be 100,000,000,000 (one hundred billion) stars like our Sun in the Milky Way.
2] The Milky Way is one of approximately tens of billions of galaxies in the universe and the Milky Way is one of the smaller galaxies.
3] It would take over 100,000 years to get from one edge of the Milky Way to the other, if you were going at more than five trillion miles per year or more than 570 billion miles per hour.
4] It has been calculated that our Milky Way is 14,000,000,000 (fourteen billion) years old
It is very hard to comprehend astronomical numbers like this but this might help:
1 billion seconds ago, it was 1980
1 billion minutes ago, Jesus had only just died
1 billion hours ago, mankind did not exist
Country folk will almost certainly discover the night sky at an earlier time than city dwellers because the atmosphere over a city is usually so polluted that you cannot see the stars from below. There are two kinds of pollutants that prevent you from seeing the stars in a city, smoke and light. Street lights give off a corona that prevents you from seeing the weaker light from the stars beyond.
If you want to evoke that instant in your life, why not take a child out into the country to look at the stars one night? If you have a pair of binoculars, so much the better, but they are not vital. If you have forgotten which stars are which, take a book on the topic or a map of the night sky. These days you can download a map of the night's sky for the day that you want.
The night sky actually changes each night. The stars and the constellations do not move a lot, so you should not have too much difficulty finding them, but if a planet is passing by, it will be in another part of the sky every night, which is why it is useful to get an up-to-date map of the night sky for the date you would like to go star gazing.
One of the hardest concepts for a child (or anyone else for that matter to comprehend is the scale of the universe - the sheer size of it. Here are a couple of facts that will amaze most individuals:
1] Our Sun is a star in the galaxy known as the Milky Way and it has its own planets revolving about it. However, there are estimated to be 100,000,000,000 (one hundred billion) stars like our Sun in the Milky Way.
2] The Milky Way is one of approximately tens of billions of galaxies in the universe and the Milky Way is one of the smaller galaxies.
3] It would take over 100,000 years to get from one edge of the Milky Way to the other, if you were going at more than five trillion miles per year or more than 570 billion miles per hour.
4] It has been calculated that our Milky Way is 14,000,000,000 (fourteen billion) years old
It is very hard to comprehend astronomical numbers like this but this might help:
1 billion seconds ago, it was 1980
1 billion minutes ago, Jesus had only just died
1 billion hours ago, mankind did not exist
About the Author:
Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on a variety of subjects, but is now concerned with the kids building set. If you would like to know more, please visit our website at Smart Toys for Kids.
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