Journey Around the Sun

      

Long ago people thought the sun was a god. They worshiped it because they knew it gave them light to see and heat to warm their bodies and to ripen their bodies and ripen their crops. Today we know that the sun is a whirling, glowing ball of hot gases and that it is really a star, our day star. It is at the center of the vast orbits, or paths, in which the earth and the other planets travel through space.
       In fact, the earth actually is controlled by the sun. Just as the earth's gravity holds everything on the earth to it, the force of gravity of the sun holds the earth in its path around the sun. It is the sum and not the earth that is the center of our path of the universe. And it is well for us that this is so. Without the sun, the earth would be a terribly cold, dark place. Nothing could grow on it. No one could live on it.
        In comparison with the size of the sun, the earth is very small. In terms of diameters, it would take 199 of our earths in a row to extend across the diameter of the sun. But in terms of volume or total space occupied, it would take more than 1,000,000 globes the size of the earth to make a globe the size of the sun. It is the great distance from us the sun look as small as it does. It is 93,000,000 miles away.
         In the previous story we learned that the spinning of the earth on its axis brings us night and day. This story will tell more about the other important motion of the earth, its long journey around the sun. It is this movement that brings us our seasons---spring, summer, autumn, or fall as it is commonly called, and winter. It takes the earth 365 and one fourth days to make the complete trip and this gives us our year.
         The earths axis is not straight up and down in relation to its path around the sun but tilted 23 and one half from that position, so first one pole and then the other faces the sun. If it were not tilted, there would be no change of seasons, as each part of the earth would receive the same amount of light and heat every month of the year. As it is, during that part of the year in which the Northern Hemisphere is tilted toward the sun, we have summer, while at the same time it is winter below the Equator because the Southern Hemisphere is then tilted away from the sun. On the other hand as the earth gets around to the other side of its orbit, the Southern Hemisphere is tilted toward the sun and the people there are having summer, while we in the northern half of the world get less sunlight and are having winter.
           Remember always to keep the stick in the orange pointing in the same direction, just as the earths axis is always in line with the  North  Star, regardless of the motion of the earth.