As we look outside through the window, up at a night sky. We find the Universe has painted the sky with stars. These shinning objects seem so small. There are thousands! And during daytime, we also see a big one close to home - our Sun!
Imagine getting into your spaceship sitting in the garden. You power up, out into space. As you go higher, you can see the Earth. As the Earth gets smaller, we can see our Solar System.
The Solar System is made up of several planets which make up our system. First we see the Sun, then the inner planets Mercury, which seems scorched by the Sun. Next we see the planet Venus. Then we see home, the Earth. From there we see Mars, and then the outer planets.
The outer planets make up Jupiter, Saturn with its famous rings. Then we see Uranus, and Neptune. We also can see the very small dwarf planet - Pluto.
As we reach higher, we can now see a distance, and in the distance there are other suns. Some have suns, planets, and possibly moons, though most are stars or group of stars. As we continue to look we can see nebula - the material that makes stars.
We gradually come to a point when we see the whole of the Milky Way. The Milky Way is our galaxy, and is made up of an estimated 100 billion (100,000,000,000) stars!
As we continue further out, we can see more galaxies. They don't all look the same. Whereas our Milky Way galaxy is like a swirling spiral, others look different, some are more than one galaxy close to each other or even touching or joined, others look circular.
As we now look, it seems as though there are as many galaxies as there are stars in our own galaxy! Now we come back to Earth, and you just may wonder at how big it all is!
This is our Universe. Alone it would take billions of years to be able to learn every one! And it would take billions of years to make the journey with the technology we have today.
Luckily we don't have to go so far to view the heavens. Telescopes have been used for the last few hundred years to help bring the universe to us. Though you may not see all the galaxies and every star out there, you will still get to see something new everyday for a lifetime.
