Sure, we all enjoy the enhanced pleasure of seeing the sky with binoculars and telescopes of various sizes and capabilities. But I suppose you may remember as a newborn the very first time you saw the presented clear night sky with all the excellent constellations, meters, and comets moving about and an exposure of specks of light some distance to various ever matter.
The best way to relive the wonder of that moment is to be in the United States with a child of your own or one who has never had this experience and be there when they glance up and utter the very powerful sentence that might express the sensations they're experiencing observing that magnificent sky. "Wow" is the expression.
The most incredible truth is most likely about what the child is staring at, which is also the most difficult for them to absorb, is the sheer magnitude of what is above them and what it signifies. The notion that almost every dot in the sky or any other celebrity or celestial frame is substantially larger than Earth itself, not by two or ten times, but by factors of loads and heaps, maybe a mind-boggling thought to children. Kids have enough trouble visualizing the vastness of the Earth, much alone something as vast as outer space.
However, when it comes to astronomy, we perform better when we fall deeper and more into amazement at what we see up there in the evening sky. A few amazing facts about what the youngsters are looking for might add to the goose bumps they are already experiencing as they stare above. Information such as...
* Our sun is part of a huge galaxy known as the Milky Way, which contains one hundred billion stars identical to it or larger. Show them that 100 billion is a hundred,000,000,000, and their mouths will drop.
* The Milky Way is merely one among tens of billions of galaxies, all of which contain billions of stars. One of the tiny galaxies in the Milky Way.
* If you wanted to push through the Milky Way, it would take you 100,000 years. However, the velocity limit prevented you from getting there. To travel all the way through that rapid, you'd have to drive five trillion, eight hundred million miles every year.
* According to scientists, the Milky Way is 14 billion years old.
These hilarious data should spark a lively debate on the beginnings of the cosmos, the possibilities of space travel, and whether or not there is life in other worlds. You may ask your children to calculate the probability of life being on one of the Milky Way's nine planets assuming each star in the Milky Way supported nine planets and only one of them became habitable like Earth. I'm sure you'll witness some great excitement when they attempt to run the one's numbers.
This kind of conversation may be humorous, intriguing, and full of questions. Don't be too quick to shut down their ideas; what they're witnessing is the beginning of a lifetime of love of astronomy. And if you were there that first second when they saw the night sky, you will relive your magnificent moment when you became a kid. And it would reawaken your interest in astronomy once again.
