Astronomy is a serious science.

Many people get involved with it when they are very young. This exciting science can provide hours of learning, that's why astronomy for kids is popular. A number of astronomy subjects interest kids. These include the solar system, planets, comets, meteorites, asteroids, stars, the sun, galaxies and of course our closest neighbor in space, the moon.

The Earth's closest neighbor is the moon. Its path around the Earth takes just over twenty seven days to complete. Mankind has only ever walked on the Earth and the moon. One of the important benefits of our relationship with the moon is the tides it causes. Because it's close enough to see clearly with the naked eye, kids are often drawn to astronomy by it.

Consider Sol, our own star, the sun. The sun is a long way away from us. The distance fluctuates between about 91 million miles and about 94 million miles. The reason for the variance is Earth's elliptical orbit. If there were no sun, we wouldn't be alive. 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. What a hog.

Our own galaxy is the Milky Way. Like all other galaxies it's a collection of gas, dust, stars and planets. Even with all this stuff to fill it, it's mostly empty. At over 100,000 light years wide and 3,000 light years high, that means the galaxy contains a whole lot of nothing. We're somewhere in the neighborhood of 30,000 light years from galactic central core. The Milky Way contains something like 100 billion stars. In fact the galaxy takes its name from the appearance of the band of stars that shine from the main section of the galaxy. From Earth it looks like a Milky Way, a large pool of milk. There are four types of galaxies – elliptical, lenticular, irregular and like the Milky Way, spiral.

Astronomy for kids is well covered online. Kids could spend hours wrapped in detailed 3D representations of the universe around us.