How to improve my knowledge about astronomy?
June 17th, 2010 | 
Author: I’m so interested in science, mostly in astronomy. I’m 13 years old and I don’t know how can I improve my knowledge about it.
Can you tell me a good way to memorize stuff and how can I know more about astronomy.
Where i can learn things apart from science in school.
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Go to your local library or bookstore, and get some books on Astronomy. And the internet has almost endless information.
check out your local planetarium. Go often.
look for a local observatory, especially this time of year they will have open viewing nights… go… ask questions.
look for a local amateur astronomy club… join.
There are many ways you can learn about science, especially astronomy.
First, if you can, visit your local planetarium, join a local astronomical society, you can even start one at your own school with the help of one of the science teachers.
Next, libraries and the internet are great sources of information. Watch NOVA and NOVA Science Now on your local PBS station.
Finally, you will have to put some effort into just plain learning and memorizing some of the facts about astronomy…reading a star map and observing the sky, learning facts about the planets and the hearby stars. Save money and but a good pair of binoculars (about $100.00 to $200.00). 7 X 35 or 8 X 56 are the ones I learned with and still use.
The best place to start is to join a local astronomical society. Sky and Telescope magazine has a list of astronomical societies listed by region.
Give it a try and…
Keep watching the skies.
EDIT: I just came across this great web site regarding the planets:
http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/astronomy/planets/
What helped me the most was reading the same information over and over and over. I finally got some of the information to stick. There are so many facts to remember, I doubt anyone knows even 50% of it all.
There are wonderful web sites with tons of information and great graphics and those are so much fun to look at and also will help you to remember.
You can use memory gimmicks to remember things also. This strange sentence:
“My very educated mother just served us nine pizzas”
will help you remember the nine planets starting from Mercury all the way to Pluto.
Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto
You see the first letter of each word in the sentence is the same as the first letter of each planet, in order going away from the sun.
Good luck, it is wonderful to have such an interest.
you could read a lot of books at a library and you could find every thing on the internet
I would suggest a subscription to a magazine such as “ASTRONOMY”. I got this magazine when I was about your age, after a few years, if you still have an interest, I would then “graduate” up to “Sky & Telescope”, it is good for more advanced amateurs. They both have good web-sites too.