StarChild Question of the Month for August 1999 Question: What causes a "falling star"? Answer: A "falling star" or a "shooting star" has nothing at all to do with a star! These amazing streaks …

A meteoroid is a piece of stone-like or metal-like debris which travels in outer space. Most meteoroids are no bigger than a pebble. Large meteoroids are believed to come from the …

The chance of seeing a meteor with the unaided eye increases after midnight. People often refer to meteors as "falling" or "shooting" stars. The brightest of the meteors are called fireballs. …

A star is a big ball of gas which gives off both heat and light. So where do stars come from? What happens to them as they grow older? A galaxy contains clouds of dust and gas, as well as …

Star Art - An Introduction to Myths of Different Cultures Star watching has occupied humans from the earliest times. Our ancestors studied the night sky and saw shapes and patterns among …

StarChild Question of the Month for September 1999 Question: What makes the Sun shine? Answer: The simple answer is that deep inside the core of the Sun, enough protons can collide …

Supernovae At large distances (up to about 1 billion light-years), astronomers can no longer use methods such as parallax or Cepheid variables. At such large distances, the parallax shift …

That word is "asterism". In ancient times, people saw asterisms and made up all kinds of stories about mythological creatures and characters which they associated with the star patterns. As …

Scientists believe that comets are made up of material left over from when the Sun and the planets were formed. They think that about 100,000 million comets orbit the Sun. Some …

An asteroid is a bit of rock. It can be thought of as what was "left over" after the Sun and all the planets were formed. Most of the asteroids in our solar system can be found orbiting the Sun …