Surprising Space and Astronomy Facts
Fact · 9 facts — swipe through each one · May 30, 8:41 PM
Venus rotates so slowly that its day is longer than its year.
A day on the planet Mercury lasts about 59 Earth days.
Neutron stars are so dense that a sugar-cube-sized amount of material would weigh about as much as all of humanity.
There are more trees on Earth than stars in the Milky Way galaxy.
Saturn could float in water because it is mostly made of gas and is less dense than water.
Jupiter's Great Red Spot is a storm larger than Earth that has been raging for at least three centuries.
If two pieces of the same type of metal touch in space, they will bond together permanently — this is called cold welding.
The Sun is 400 times larger than the Moon but also 400 times farther away, making them appear the same size in the sky.
The footprints left by Apollo astronauts on the Moon could stay there for millions of years since there is no wind or water to erase them.
Interesting Facts About Space and Astronomy
Fact · 10 facts — swipe through each one · Apr 4, 12:32 PM
There are more trees on Earth than stars in the Milky Way galaxy, with about 3 trillion trees compared to an estimated 100-400 billion stars.
Venus is the hottest planet in our solar system, with surface temperatures reaching up to 900 degrees Fahrenheit (475 degrees Celsius), even hotter than Mercury.
A day on Venus is longer than a year on Venus because it takes 243 Earth days to rotate once on its axis and only 225 Earth days to orbit the Sun.
Neutron stars are so dense that a sugar-cube-sized amount of their material would weigh about 6 billion tons on Earth.
The largest volcano in the solar system is Olympus Mons on Mars, which is about 13.6 miles (22 kilometers) high, nearly three times the height of Mount Everest.
Jupiter's Great Red Spot is a giant storm that has been raging for at least 350 years and is large enough to fit two or three Earths inside it.
A day on Mercury, from one sunrise to the next, lasts about 176 Earth days due to its slow rotation and fast orbit around the Sun.
Saturn's rings are made mostly of ice particles, ranging from tiny grains to pieces as large as houses.
The Sun accounts for about 99.86% of the total mass of our solar system, with its gravitational pull holding the planets in orbit around it.
In 2019, scientists captured the first-ever image of a black hole, located in the galaxy M87, about 55 million light-years from Earth.