No matter how mature you are as an amateur astronomer, there is always a fundamental moment we all come back to. It was at that moment that I came out to a place where I could see the night sky and the universe. For city dwellers, this is a profound revelation as they discover the aliens who live among us. Most of us are unaware of the vast panorama of light that makes up a clear night sky when city lights do not block our view.
Indeed, we all love the enhanced experience of studying the sky with binoculars and telescopes of various sizes and magnifications. But I think I remember the first time I saw a perfectly rendered, clear night sky as a kid.
The best way to recapture the magnificence of the moment is to go to the countryside with your children, or those who have never had such an experience, and be there in the moment when they look up. Only one can sum up the feelings they have upon seeing that glorious sky. The word is "wow".
Perhaps the most amazing fact about what this child sees, and the most difficult thing for him to grasp, is the sheer enormity of what is above him and what it represents.
The mere fact that almost every point is almost certainly another star or celestial body considerably larger than the Earth itself, not twice or ten times, but hundreds or thousands of times, makes his children It can be an overwhelming thought. Children have trouble enough to imagine the size of the Earth itself, let alone the size of the universe.
But when it comes to astronomy, the more and more awe we have of what we see in the night sky, the better we get. Some amazing facts about what children see may add to the goosebumps they already get when they look at the sky. Facts like...
* Our Sun is part of a vast galaxy called the Milky Way, made up of hundreds of billions of stars of equal or greater size. Show them that 100 billion is 100,000,000,000.
* The Milky Way is just one of tens of billions of galaxies, each containing billions of stars. The Milky Way is one of the smaller galaxies.
* It takes 100,000 years to cross the Milky Way. But you can't get there at the speed limit. To traverse the entire route that fast would require driving 5.8 billion miles per year.
* Scientists have calculated that the Milky Way Galaxy is 14 billion years old. These little fun facts should start a pretty lively discussion about the origin of the universe, the possibility of space travel, or whether life exists on other planets. If there are nine planets and only one of them is as habitable as Earth, we can challenge you to calculate the probability that there is life on any of them. I think you'll see some real excitement when you try to do the math.
Such discussions can be fun, exciting, and question-filled. Don't be hasty in stifling your imagination, because this is the birth of a lifelong love for astronomy that you're witnessing. And if you were there the first time you saw this night sky, it would remind you of your big moment as a child. And it can spark a whole new enthusiasm for astronomy in you.
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