Anita Kaye Cecil, age 7, of Thomasville, No. Carolina, for her question:

Is the sky higher than the sun?

Things up in the sky tend to fool our eyes    and young spaceagers should know the true facts. For example, we can figure out that the sun is farther away than the clouds. We know this because clouds pass between us and the sun, hiding its shining face. Actually the clouds float just a few miles above our heads. They float in the air, which reaches up hundreds of miles. The air is where the sky begins    and if our eyes could see all the way, we would know that the sky spreads on and on forever.

Experts tell us that our world is a big ball, spinning on and on through the sky. Our sky is a small view of outer space, which reaches around us like an endless ocean. The stars we see are near and far, like islands in the great ocean of space. Our nearest star is the dazzling sun. It is only 93 million miles out in space    but some of the stars in our sky are trillions and trillions of miles away.