Astronomy Fact Pages
Totally Random Astronomy Facts!
- On Mars, the force of gravity is only about 38% that of Earth's. That means if you weighed 50 kg on Earth, you'd only weigh about 19 kg on Mars!
- Earth spins to the east, which is why the sun rises in the east. In fact, so does every planet except Venus.
- It takes about 1.255 seconds for moonlight to reach Earth. That means that when we look at the moon, we're really seeing what the moon looked like over a second ago!
- A micrometeorite is an extra-terrestrial dust particle, measuring from about 50 nm (nanometers, or millionths of a meter) to 2 mm. Astronomers believe that more than 3,000 micrometeorites fall to earth every second.
- A single solar flare can release the energy equivalent of 100 atomic bombs exploding all at once.
- There are more than one sextillion stars in space... that's 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.
- Think the Milky Way is big? The universe is made up of over 50 billion galaxies.
- Atmospheric pressure is so strong on Saturn that some scientists think up to 1 million kilograms of diamonds may fall as precipitation there each year.
