Why does the moon follow us when we drive.

The moon doesn't look as if it's very far away, but its distance from the earth averages 239,000 miles. The diameter of the moon is 2,160 miles, or less than the distance across the United States. But when the moon is observed with a very large telescope, it looks as if it were only about 200 miles away,

Because the moon seems so close and big to us, we sometimes forget that 239,000,miles is quite a distance away. It is this great distance that explains why the moon seems to follow us when we drive in an automobile and look up at it.

To begin with, our feeling that this is happening is just that-only a feeling, a psychological reaction. When we speed along a road, we notice feat everything moves past us. Trees, houses, fences, the road - all fly past us in the opposite direction.

Now there's the moon, part at what we see as we look out, and we naturally expect it also to be flying past us, or at least to be moving backward as we speed ahead. When this doesn't happen, we have the sensation that it is "following" us.

But why doesn't it happen? Because the distance of the moon from tile earth is quite great. Compared to the distance our automobile travels in a few minutes, that distance is enormous. So as our automobile moves along, the angle at which we see the moon hardly changes.

In fact, we could go along a straight path for miles and the angle at which we would see the moon would still be basically the same. And as we notice everything else flying past, we get that feeling of me moon "following" us.

Why is the sky blue?

You know that the sky is blue, but have you ever thought why it isn't white, green or red? Here is the reason. Light from the sun is white. But white is composed of many colours - yellow, orange, red, green, blue and violet. Blue and violet have shorter wave lengths then the light waves of other colours.

Small particles of dust and moisture in the atmosphere bend the blue and violet waves of the sun's rays and spread them all over the atmosphere. Therefore, we see these colours more clearly than other colours in the rays, and the sky seems blue.

Try this easy experiment.

Fill a glass with water. Add a few drops of milk to represent the air filled with dust and moisture.

Take a pocket torch. Now darken the room. The beam from the pocket torch represents the light from the sun. Hold the pocket torch two inches from the glass and at a right angle to it.

The water looks blue! Why?

The particles of milk in the water have bent the blue waves which are contained in the white beam from the pocket torch. In the same way, the dust and moisture in the air bend the blue waves in the sun's rays and make the sky look blue.

What is the milky way?

There is probably nothing more mysterious and wonderful then to observe meteoric rain. Most meteors are destroyed entirely by heat as they pass through the earth atmosphere. Only the larger meteor fragments ever reach the earth. Scientists believe that thousands of meteors fall to earth each day and night, but since most of the earth's surface is covered by water, they usually fall into oceans and lakes. Meteors may appear in the sky singly and travel in practically any direction. But meteors usually occur in swarms of thousands. As the earth travels in its path around the sun, it may come close to such swarms of meteors, and they be-come fiery hot upon contact with the upper layers of the atmosphere, and we see a "meteoric shower." Where do meteors come from? Astronomers now believe that the periodic swarms of meteors are the broken fragments of comets. When comets break up, the millions of fragments continue to move through space as a meteor swarm or stream. The swarms move in regular orbits, or paths, through space. One such swarm crosses the earth's path every 33 years.

When a piece of meteor reaches the earth, it is called "a meteorite." It has fallen to the earth because gravity has pulled it down. Far back in Roman times, in 467 B.C., a meteorite fell to the earth and its fall was considered such an important event that it was recorded by Roman historians!