Question about space?

Question

What are Galaxies? What are Solar Systems? And what is the Speed of Light? (please explain so that a fifth grader can understand - not so complicated)

Answer 1

Galaxies are huge clusters of billions of stars. Smaller hunks of stars are called "clusters" -- but once they get really _REALLY_ big, they're called galaxies.

Solar systems are systems of planets and other hunks of rock orbiting a SINGLE STAR... so, the Earth and the other planets are part of OUR solar system, orbiting the sun. Other suns have OTHER solar systems where DIFFERENT planets are orbiting.

The speed of light is REALLY REALLY FAST.

If you turn on a light on the moon, no one on earth will see the light for almost two seconds because it took the light that long to get here.

But the speed of light is _SO FAST_ that even going from New York to Las Angeles, all the way across the United States it only takes about two one-hundredths of a second to get there (0.016 seconds)

This shows two things, the moon is a LONG ways away,and light is VERY VERY FAST. The speed of light is 186000 (one hundred and eighty six thousand) miles per second. A rifle bullet travels only around two to three thousand miles per hour. So, light is two hundred thousand times faster than a speeding bullet. Really REALLY fast.

Answer 2

A solar system is a star and any planets orbiting around it.

Some solar systems have more than one star and may or may not have any planets.

A galaxy is a collection of stars. The Milky Way is our galaxy that our sun is part of. The next closest galaxy is Andromeda which is 2 million light years away.

The speed of light is 186 000 miles per SECOND so the distance light travels in a year is something like 4 trillion miles. (That's the next number over a billion)

The nearest star is the sun at about 8 light minutes and the nearest star you can see is Alpha Centauri, about 4.3 light years away.

Answer 3

Galaxies are clusters of stars and planets - we are part of the Milky Way galaxies. Solar system is a star with planets that revolve around it. Some solar systems have been found that have two stars.

The speed of light is an enormous 186,000 miles per second ! That's fast - for instance, our sun is 93,000,000 miles away, and the light only takes about 8 minutes to reach us!

Answer 4

Let's deal with your questions in reverse order...

1.) Light travels at the speed 186,000 miles per second
(which is so fast that nothing can exceed it, according to
scientific theory). (Science Fiction novels say otherwise).

2.) Our Solar System (Solar refers to our Sun) is comprised of our Sun, the nine planets which orbit it, and the various moons
which are associated with those planets. Earth, for example, has one Moon which we see clearly almost every night. The nine planets are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto. (Some are trying to deny Pluto the status of a planet based on complex arguments). I listed the planets in their actual order of distance moving away from the Sun.

Our Sun and this Solar System are part of what is called the our Galaxy (with a Capital "G"). Our Galaxy is comprised of all the stars and planets and moons you can see in the night sky. Our Sun is just one of the estimated 100,000 Million other stars in our Galaxy. Each of those stars may have from 0 to say 10 planets orbiting around it which we cannot see because of the brilliance of the particular stars themselves.

Behind our Galaxy lie many other galaxies which we can detect but not clearly see due to light interference from stars in our own Galaxy. We can detect those far away galaxies using radio telescopes pointed at voids in our own Galaxy.

Regards,
Zah

Answer 5

I'm a 6th grader, I can answer.'
A Galaxie is a huge cluster of stars
it can have 3 shapes, elliptical(oval like)
Spiral, like our galaxy and irregular
if want a pic. goto google.com/images
search galaxies

solar systems are a system of planets and asteriods(whatever)
that have to do with the star or sun at the centr

speed of light is the speed that light travels
example
1second-300 000 000 miles

always nice to help somone around my age

Answer 6

Galaxies are the gigantic group of stars.
Solar Systems are the stars and everything that moves around them.
The speed of light is how fast is the light. It's 299792458 m/s

Answer 7

Galaxies are what hold millions of solar system (ex. we are int he milky way galaxy and we are in one of those solar systems.) the speed of light is 600,000 mph.