An island in space
We live on an island. An island in space!
An island is a piece of land with water all around it. The earth is a
giant ball of rock and metal with space all around it.
A ball of rock and metal such as the earth is called a planet. Planets
are the “prisoners” of stars. They circle around and around the stars
they belong to. Earth is one of nine planets that circle around and
around our star, the sun.
The sun is an enormous ball of hot, glowing gas. To us, the earth seems
big, but it’s small compared to the sun. The sun is bigger than a
million earths!
The earth has one near neighbor, the moon. The moon is a ball of rock,
like earth, but much smaller. It
circles around earth just as earth circles around the sun.
The moon is thousands of miles (kilometers) away from the earth. The sun
and the other planets are millions of miles away. And the stars that you
see twinkling in the sky at night are trillions of miles (kilometers)
away. So, the earth is really a tiny island in the great, black
emptiness of space. But for us, it’s the most important place of all.
It’s our home.
