I love space. I love reading about space, watching space-themed movies, and even went to college to become an astronaut (though changed majors due to height restrictions). Yet even I didn’t know these 20 insanely awesome space facts. From a second Moon, to the length of a photon pregnancy, these facts will surely blow you away!
1. The 40,000 km-wide Great Red Spot on Jupiter is a storm that’s been brewing for at least the past 200 years. To put it into perspective, the Earth could fit in the Red Spot three times over.
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2. Contrary to popular belief, the Earth has more than one moon. Cruithne (“The Earth’s Second Moon”) is one of six quasi-satellite asteroids that rotate in a near identical orbit to the Earth.
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3. An object the size of Mars collided with the Earth 4.5 billion years ago.
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4. The sun’s temperature is approximately 9,941 Fahrenheit.
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5. The sun is over 300,000 times larger than the Earth.
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6. It takes the average photon 170,000 years to travel from the sun’s core to the surface.
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7. It takes that same photon only 8 minutes to then reach Earth.
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8. Scientists recently discovered a planet lost in the glare of a supernova for 21 years.
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9. Astronauts left a mirror on the Moon’s surface during the Moon landing. Scientists used this mirror to bounce a laser off it and accurately measure the distance to the Earth.
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10. The Sun travels around the galaxy — a journey of 100,000 light years — once every 200 million years.
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11. All of the planets in our solar system could fit in the space between the Earth and the Moon.
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12. Over a thousand planets were discovered in the last 20 years.
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13. Jupiter is two and a half times larger than all the other planets in the solar system combined.
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14. Only three people have died outside our atmosphere.
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15. Mars is the home of Mount Olympus, the tallest volcano in the solar system. At 21 km high, and 60 km wide, it’s roughly the size of Ireland.
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16. Because there’s no atmosphere on the Moon, the 1969 footprints by Apollo 11 are still there today.
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17. A tablespoon of a neutron star would weigh about 10 billion tons.
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18. The sun accounts for 99.86% of all mass in our solar system.
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19. The core of a star reaches 16 million degrees celsius. A single grain of sand this hot would kill a human from 150 km away.
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20. You can see another galaxy with the naked eye: The Andromeda Galaxy, 2.2 million light years away.
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(via All That Is Interesting)
Can you believe we actually have SEVEN moons in orbit? Or that even Jupiter could fit between us and the Moon? I can’t, and I just told you!
