Forty Five Space Facts That Are Out of This World
Forty five facts that prove space isn’t all just ordinary planets and stars.
- The sun makes up 99.86% of our solar system’s mass.
- Mercury is named after the Roman messenger god.
- Venus spins in the opposite direction of most planets.
- The Earth is 149,598,262 kilometers from the sun.
- Mars is home to Olympus Mons, the solar system’s tallest volcano.
- Jupiter is large enough to for the Earth to fit inside it 1,000 times.
- Saturn has the solar system’s second largest moon, Titan.
- Uranus is the coldest planet in the solar system.
- Neptune orbits the sun only once every 165 years.
- The Earth orbits the sun at 30 km/s.
- The sun orbits the center of the Milky Way galaxy at 250 km/s.
- The Milky Way moves through the center of the universe at around 600 km/s.
- A full moon is nine times brighter than a half moon.
- About 1% of the static on the television is caused by Cosmic Background Radiation (CMB).
- Cosmic Background Radiation is radiation left over from the big bang about 13.7 billion years ago.
- Thirty three light-years away is an exoplanet covered in burning ice.
- According to the best estimates of astronomers, 275 million new stars are born every day.
- Ninety to ninety nine percent of all normal matter in the universe is hydrogen.
- Only 55% of all Americans know that the sun is a star.
- Sweeps 10 is the planet with shortest known orbital period, rotating its star every 10 hours.
- A dwarf star is so dense, it would take about eight men to lift a single teaspoon of its matter.
- If a block of lead was dropped onto Venus, it would melt.
- All 27 of Uranus’ moons are named for William Shakespeare and Alexander Pope characters.
- Sunsets on Mars are blue.
- Mars appears red because its surface is covered in iron oxide or rust.
- If you could run at the speed of light, you could complete 7,1054 marathons in a single second.
- One day on Venus is longer than one year on Earth.
- Astronomers have discovered a planet 4,000 light years away that is made out of diamonds.
- The first flower grown in space, a zinnia, bloomed on January 16th, 2016.
- A space vehicle must move at a rate of 27.35 km/s to escape Earth’s gravity.
- The Earth is slowing down about 17 milliseconds every 100 years.
- Earth is actually an oval due to gravity and centrifugal force.
- An astronaut can be up to two inches taller after returning from space.
- The odds of being killed by space debris are roughly one in 5 billion.
- The sun weighs about 2,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kg.
- If Jupiter’s 67 moons were lined up side by side, they’d span the distance from Western Australia to New York.
- “Moonbows” are rainbows that appear at night.
- There may be 20 trillion galaxies in the universe.
- Proxima Centauri is the nearest star to Earth after the sun.
- The sun could hold 1 million Earths.
- A new star is born in our galaxy roughly every 18 days.
- Mercury is the second densest planet in our solar system.
- The wind on Neptune is so fast it breaks the sound barrier.
- If you placed Saturn in water, it would float.
- A pistol star is the brightest kind of star, 10 million times brighter than the sun.
Find these facts and more here.
About the Contributor
![Photo of Alexandra Rapp](https://www.sequoitmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/alex-317x475.gif)
Alexandra Rapp, Digital Director
Alex Rapp is a senior at Antioch High School and this is her third year on staff. She is the current Digital Director.
Her favorite quote is "She wasn't looking for a knight, she was looking for a sword." - atticus.
Her favorite quote is "She wasn't looking for a knight, she was looking for a sword." - atticus.