As soon as the children are curious enough and start looking at the sky they ask What will be that light that is seen up there? The kids no longer have excuses to know what they are seeing or what they want to see and identify it without a doubt. And is that on the page of the APOD (Astronomy Picture of the Day, just published a quick guide, in English, to learn what you see and rule out what imagination and fantasy can cause in some observations. You can identify up to twelve luminous objects in the sky, which is not bad at all.
In the guide you can know if the light moves, if it is intermittent, if we live near a city, what if it moves very fast is because it is an airplane and of course if it is far from the light pollution it can surely be a star, especially if they flicker, or a planet like Mars or Venus, to know The morning star! which is the one that always appears near the horizon just before sunrise or after sunset. And, of course, a sense of humor is not lacking because you really don't know how to identify the sun or the moon yet? or the light of a ship's mast? Or have you seen the ISS astronauts say hello?
It reminded me of the illustration we published in Peques and Más a few months ago about meteorites and that also appear here in three groups.
From Peques and Más we recommend making night excursions with the kids to the countryside, escaping outside the city, better in a clear area with the horizon in sight, out of the light pollution and get to look. As we let the kids explore and play with the imagination they will advance in their desire to know more, to explore and to ask themselves things. And it is that having a critical vision is going to be valued more and more.
