The Universe

The kids listened attentively as I read The Universe (by Scholastic) for their bedtime story. The book discussed the big bang, the solar system, Earth, and the moon. The kids liked the graphics and the pictures. I liked the fact that they were interested in astronomy. As a kid, I loved astronomy. I loved reading about the sun, the moon, the Earth, the stars, the constellations, the entire universe.

I still recall being a child in some office somewhere pulling a magazine off the rack and reading it. I forget the name of the magazine, but it talked about the life cycle of our sun and how it was billions of years old. The sun would continue to age, shifting from a young star to an old star that would flare up and destroy the planets and finally explode and shed all of its surface material with only a core remnant remaining. I recall the wonderful graphics depicting each stage of the sun's growth, and how entranced I was by the graphics and the wondrous knowledge of the great drama that the sun would undergo. I did not become an astronomer, but the love of astronomy remains with me still. Maybe my kids will be astronomers, but if not, they can still love astronomy.