Stars! Stars! Stars! Read online

  To Catherine, Jean and Joe, my favorite stars.

  Stars! Stars! Stars!

  by Bob Barner

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Stars! Stars! Stars!

  Meet the Planets!

  Meet the Universe!

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Stars! Stars! Stars!

  I want to see planets and stars!

  Bright stars twinkling above big city lights

  Distant planets glowing over black country nights

  Constellations that take shape when I connect them with lines

  Milky Way stars shining two hundred billion times

  The Sun that burns with golden light

  Hot planet Mercury turning slowly in the night

  Venus, the Evening Star, first planet to shine in the twilight sky

  Blue-green Earth

  with the dusty Moon orbiting by

  Stormy Mars glowing red in the vastness of space

  Giant planet Jupiter moving with grace

  Saturn circled by rings and

  Uranus spinning on its side

  Windy Neptune and tiny Pluto orbiting wide

  Shooting stars streaking tails of sparkling light

  The Big Dipper holding a scoop of night

  Stars! Stars! Stars!

  I want to see planets and stars tonight!

  Meet the Planets!

  The Sun is a medium-size star. All nine of the planets in our solar system orbit the Sun. The Sun has been burning for about 5 billion years.

  Mercury, the closest planet to the Sun, is only a little larger than the Moon. Its surface is covered with tall mountains and deep craters.

  Venus is a planet, but it is called the Evening Star because it is usually the first light we see shining in the evening sky.

  Earth, our home, is the only planet in our solar system that we know supports life.

  Mars, the red planet, is about half the size of Earth. Mars looks red because it is covered with rust-colored soil.

  Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system. It is so big that all of the other planets could fit inside it.

  Saturn is not very dense and would float in water. Its rings are made of pieces of dust and ice varying from as small as a pea to as large as a car.

  Uranus spins on its side. The narrow ring around Uranus is made of black ice.

  Neptune, the blue planet, has winds that blow up to 1,500 miles per hour (2,420 km/h). Its blue color is caused by methane in its atmosphere.

  Pluto, the smallest planet, is smaller than the Moon. Pluto is also farthest from the Sun, as far as 4.6 billion miles (7.38 billion km)!

  Meet the Universe!

  A star is a giant ball of glowing gas. Stars twinkle because we see them through layers of moving air in Earth’s atmosphere.

  A constellation is a group of stars that people connect with imaginary lines to form a design. There are 88 constellations in the sky.

  A sun is any star that is the center of a planetary system. Our sun is a medium-size star.

  A planet is a large object that orbits a sun but doesn’t make its own light. Planets reflect the light from stars. They don’t twinkle because they are closer to Earth than stars are.

  Gravity is the force that keeps objects in orbit. Gravity keeps us from floating off the Earth!

  A moon orbits a planet the way a planet orbits a sun. Some planets, such as Saturn, have many moons.

  An asteroid is a rocky object, much smaller than a planet, that orbits a sun.

  A comet is made of ice and dust and orbits a sun.

  A meteor is a space rock that crashes into the surface of a planet or moon.

  A shooting star isn’t a star at all. It’s a meteor that burns up when it gets close to Earth.

  A solar system is all of the planets, moons, asteroids, comets and other matter that orbits a sun.

  A galaxy is made up of billions of stars, gas and dust held together by gravity. Planet Earth is in the Milky Way Galaxy.

  The universe is all of the light, matter and energy that exists in time and space.

  Bob Barner

  works with pen, ink, watercolor, cut and torn paper, and a computer. He lives in San Francisco with his wife, Cathie, and enjoys traveling around the world to talk with children about books and art.

  Copyright 2002 by Bob Barner.

  All rights reserved.

  The illustrations in this book were rendered in paper collage.

  eISBN 978-1-4521-1379-1

  www.chroniclekids.com

 

 

  Bob Barner, Stars! Stars! Stars!

  Thanks for reading the books on GrayCity.Net