The Little Astronomer

I’m going through a slight astronomy phase of late, partially because the Little One, age 5, is so involved with the Moon and Jupiter. She never fails to alert me to the Moon’s presence when we’re driving, no matter what time of night or day it happens to be. And, of course, we’ve been following Jupiter’s arc in the low southern sky, which we have a good view from the backyard, over the past two months.

In fact, Jupiter is her favorite planet. So I was reading through The Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Universe last night as a reward for all the hard work we did yesterday (putting up the fake tree, decorating the house, grocery shopping and five loads of laundry). She pops down on the floor next to me and I turn to the chapter on our largest planet and begin the lesson.

Now, we’ve been studying astronomy since the summer. She has a really awesome pack of flash cards just on the subject. After only two or three times using them, she can identify all nine planets* from their pictures. She knows a handful of constellations (one of which she calls the Big Diaper) and can name the Eagle and Horsehead Nebulae by sight. It amazes me. But then again, like all very young children, her mind’s a sponge for all sorts of knowledge and her cerebral retrieval system is flawless. She still rattles off Greek words, months and months since she last spent a full day with her Greek sitter.

The Little Astronomer drew a picture of the solar system for me on construction paper in red marker. Jupiter is striped and has its red spot. Saturn has its rings, the Sun has its rays. Mars is colored in with the red marker. There’s a fifth planet with vertical stripes. Not sure what that one is supposed to be. Probably my wife’s fashion sense genes surfacing in the Little One.

Here it is:

We’re working on the Galilean satellites: Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto, and their characteristics. By the way, they’ll be celebrating their 400th anniversary of discovery by Galileo in a month; I’ll have a big post on that. I also recited some random facts, which she seemed to be into, as long as I didn’t push it. The zones and belts, the wind speeds, how long the Great Red Spot’s been wreaking havoc.

Then, a couple of pages later, in the Human Spaceflight section of the book, a small box on Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space nearly fifty years ago. I look over to the Little One, who’s now forgotten about me and my Illustrated Encyclopedia, now playing with Patch near the Christmas tree, and I wonder. I wonder what she’ll be doing in twenty-five or thirty years. Perhaps she’ll spend a Christmas then in the Jovian system, preparing for the first manned landing on the frozen seas of Europa …

* I said it before and I’ll say it again. In our house, Pluto is and always will be a planet!