The High Wind Blows: Part 2

By DAVID HILL

What's Polewind? It's a satellite to study the Solar Wind - the tiny sub-atomic particles pouring off the Sun and charging towards the Earth at nearly 1000 k's per second. When they hit our atmosphere, the particles sometimes cause aurorae, those weird lights glowing in the sky near the North Pole and South Pole.

How come I'm here? I won it in a raffle. Not quite. I've always been keen on space and astronomy; I'll tell you more later. So I went in for this essay competition organised by ESA and NASA, where kids all over the world write why they'd like to be astronomers.

I put the usual stuff. Then at the end, I suddenly scribbled, `In another five billion years, our Sun will die. But while it's burning, it shows human beings aren't really alone in the Universe. Even if there's no other life out there, there's energy and signals coming at us. An aurora is a message from the Sun. I'd love to read some of those messages.

Publisher: Puffin

Price: $15.95

Age group: 8-14 years