Astronomy Basics on Pitara Kids Network

How the Moon was Created

Tue, 16 Oct 2001 13:28:03 +0000

Long long ago when the world was just created there was just the sun but no moon. So there was just day with the sun shining brightly all the time. The sun did not set. So there was no night. People worked until they were too tired to work any more. There was no set time for work or a fixed time for rest.

One day the creator of the world came to visit it. He saw men working in fields.

How Far Away are the Stars?

Thu, 04 Dec 2003 12:42:03 +0000

The sun is a star, just like the thousands of others we see in the sky each night. But it looks so very big. Is it the biggest star? No. The only reason the sun appears so big is because it is closer to us than any other star.

The sun is just 93,000,000 miles (or 14,88,000,000 km) away from the earth. That seems an awful lot of distance, but light can travel so quickly that the sun’s rays reach the earth in a little more than eight minutes! That is the wonder of light.

Dealing With the Potential Danger of a Meteor Hitting Earth

Sun, 01 Dec 2002 02:08:49 +0000

Our solar system is like a busy traffic round-about. The sun is at the centre of this round-about which drives a large number of heavenly bodies, including planets, comets and large and small rocks around it.

While the earth and the other planets chart fairly fixed paths around the sun, our smaller solar siblings, like rocks, do not believe in staying in their lanes. As a result, a large rock – the size of a small city – bangs into the earth every once in a while.

A Beautiful Ship in the Sky

Tue, 18 Jul 2000 05:30:49 +0000

In the boundless ocean of space, a beautiful ship sails serenely around the sun. Our earth – Lovelier than the moon, this fragile ship travels one hundred and sixty thousand kilometres every hour.

Space is full of countless such ships.
But our Earth is special.
It is the only ship which carries life –
the only ship with voyagers on board.

Four hundred thousand different kinds of life make their home on Earth.
Together, they make it beautiful and precious.

Which Galaxy is Visible to the Eye?

Sun, 16 Nov 2003 01:16:32 +0000

The sun we see everyday is just one of the thousands of stars we see at night. Such a huge collection of stars is called a galaxy. And the stars we see belong to a galaxy called the Milky Way. There are millions of galaxies in the sky, most of whom are hidden from our view.

However, there are some galaxies which can be seen with the naked eye. The most famous and the brightest of these is the M31 or the Andromeda galaxy.