Lynn Welch, Age 8, Of South Portland, Me., for her question:

Why is the sky dark at night?

When the sun sets at the end of the day, the sky above changes from pale blue to darker blue. The last bright rays linger a while in the west, and when they fade the color of the sky is ve1vety black. The night may sparkle with hosts of bright stars and glow with the light of the moon. But the sky will stay dark until the morning sunbeams arise in the east and change it back again to blue.
Our wonder world is a whopping big ball, spinning around and around like a top. We live on the outside of our globe, and when we look up at the slay we are looking out at the vast ocean of space. Our round world is surrounded by space on every side. Space, space and more space stretches on and on in every direction as far and much much farther than our eyes can see.
This ocean of space around the globe is the heavens, the sky we see aboye our heads. And we are not alone in this vast ocean of space. It is populated with other planets like our globe. There are eight more planets circling around our bright eyed sun. The sparkling stars are other suns, so far away that they look like dots of light. But our sun is just a skip of sky distance away. It looks huge and its dazzling rays light up our sky when we face toward its place in the ocean of space.
As the earth spins around, the spot on which we live is turned to face first one view, then another view of teeming sky. The big ball turns once around every 24 hours. Half of the globe is always facing the sun and the other faces away from the sun and looks out at the starry sky. When our side faces the sun, its golden beams fall upon us and it is day time. When we are turned away from the sun, it is night time.
The endless ocean of space is velvety black. But when the sun shines overhead, its brilliant rays lighten and brighten the sky. The air above our heads plays tricks with the sunbeams. It shatters and scatters their blue rays of light all over the heavens. When the sun sets, its bright beams are no longer there to light up the sky. We face away from the sun and see the velvety darkness of outer space. Come morning, the globe will spin all the way around and we shall be facing the sun again. Its streaming sunbeams will brighten the sky and tint it with blue.
The air around our world reaches up perhaps for a thousand miles. Above the air, the sun shines with a c1ear, bright light in a sky of midnight black. The heavens are dotted with bright spots of light which are the faraway stars. And as far as a spaceman can see in all directions, the endless ocean of space is black, the same dusky background color we see in the sky on a cloudless night.