Donna Marie Monteith, age 10, of Kingston, Ontario, Canada, for her question:

Where are the stars in a rainstorm?

Every young space ager should know what's up above. Because, who knows, someday you may leave the rains of Earth behind and take a space ship to a distant star. From, the earth, the stars may look as close as the clouds. But things Up There can fool your eyes. Actually the clouds are quite close. The highest ones are only about seven miles above our heads    and a gloomy rain cloud may be less than one mile high.

The stars are way, way out there in outer space. The closest one is about 27 trillion miles away    and the rest of them are very much farther. So when the rain clouds form, just a few miles above our heads, they get between us and the distant stars. Until the dark clouds depart, the stars are hidden from our view. So are the sun and the moon.