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Although astronomy is the oldest science, it continues to be at the forefront of not only scientific thought, but that of the public at large too. Who has not looked up at the galaxy while walking home late at night and wondered? Having said that though, the ancient people of certainly the northern hemisphere, but probably both, knew the movements of the stars and planets better than most of us do nowadays.

They knew even then, thousands of years ago, that most stars appear to rise in the Eastern skies at night and travel on circular paths. They also noticed that some ‘stars’ were ‘wanderers’ (we call them planets) and that sometimes they travelled ‘against the flow’.

They also named clusters of stars that we now call constellations or even galaxies and knew that those visible in the winter were different from those visible in the summer.and that others were visible all year round. The average common man of 5,000 – 10,000 years ago almost certainly knew more about the movement of the celestial bodies than the average common man of today does. (I mean men and women here, of course).

They learned how to calculate or at least locate the extremities of the sunrise and went to extraordinary lengths to mark those positions with huge stone structures, such as Stonehenge in the United Kingdom, probably to facilitate the location of certain positions of the sun or other planets or stars, which may have been important to their religious beliefs or crop cycles.

In 1609, Galileo invented the first artificial device for looking at the stars and planets. It was the first astronomical telescope and through it he was able to see things millions of miles away that no person had ever seen before. Because of the conclusions he came to from his observations, he had trouble with the Roman Catholic Church and was often in serious danger for his life, so outrageous were his discoveries.

But mankind was not to be put off, and since then we have gone on to build ever bigger and ever better astronomical telescopes with which we can even detect radio waves, microwaves, X-rays, infrared waves and gamma waves from outer space. Forty years ago, we even travelled to our Moon. and we have sent probes to eight of the nine planets in our Solar System, as well as to several comets and asteroids.

Where will we go next? That decision was always up to the government of the USA and the old USSR, but now there are other players in the field. What will China or India want to explore with their possibly slightly different outlook on life? Or will it be only a question of financial benefit?

The world may be in a state of flux and power may be shifting from its traditional seats, but it has not lessened interest in questions that scientists think can only be answered in space. These are exciting times in the science of astronomy, but then man has always found astronomy enthralling .

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Astronomy is a very exact science, although many people get involved with it when they are quite young. Astronomy is a thought-provoking hobby that can teach children about the sciences in general. A number of astronomical subjects interest kids and movies like Star Wars and they only serve to increase this attraction.

The Earth’s nearest neighbour is the moon. Its journey around the Earth takes just over twenty-seven days to complete. Mankind has only ever set foot on the Earth and the moon. The gravity between the moon and Earth causes the tides. Its brightness in the night sky attracts many children to want to learn more about it and the subject of astronomy in general.

Then there’s our sun. Earth is quite far from the sun. The distance varies between about 91 million miles and about 94 million miles, although these measurements are not completely accurate. They are inaccurate measurements, because the Earth orbits the sun is in an uneven ellipse. Life on Earth is only possible because of the sun, because it provides us with important elements such as light and heat. It is not a well-known fact that the sun contains about 98% of all the mass available in the solar system. Think about how tiny a person is compared to that – it is truly imponderable!

The Earth is in the galaxy called the Milky Way. Like all other galaxies, it’s a very large group of gas, dust, stars and planets. Most of the area in a galaxy is filled with nothing, only empty space. In other words, most of its volume, 3,000 light years high by 100,000 light years diameter, the volume of our galaxy, is nothingness.

The Earth is situated somewhere in the neighbourhood of 30,000 light years from the central core of our galaxy. The emptiness is broken up by over 100 billion stars. In fact, the galaxy was named for the thick group of stars in the main portion of it.

It resembles a pool of liquid, which is why it was called the Milky Way. There are four types of galaxies: elliptical, lenticular, irregular and, like our Milky Way, spiral.

There is a great deal of information about astronomy on the Internet that is fit for children: it ranges from dictionaries and encyclopaedic references to programs that show the paths of the different planets, solar systems and objects right on the computer’s monitor! In fact, there’s more information out there than a child could ever get through.

Fascinated by astronomy, please pop along to our website at: http://astronomy.the-real-way.com This and other unique content ” articles are available with free reprint rights.