107 Space Facts - Planets, Stars & Cosmic Mysteries

Planets

Venus rotates in the opposite direction to most planets, making its sun rise in the west and set in the east.
A day on Venus is longer than its year because it takes more time to rotate once on its axis than to orbit the Sun.
Jupiter is so large that all the other planets in the Solar System could fit inside it.
Mars appears red because its surface is covered in iron oxide, better known as rust.
Neptune’s winds can reach speeds of over 2,000 kilometres per hour, the fastest in the Solar System.
Saturn’s density is so low it would float in water if you could find a big enough ocean.
Uranus spins on its side, likely due to a massive collision early in its history.
Mercury experiences the most extreme temperature swings of any planet, from -180°C to over 430°C.
Earth is the only planet in the Solar System where water can exist as a solid, liquid, and gas on the surface.
Pluto has mountains made of water ice and plains of frozen nitrogen.
Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is a storm that has been raging for at least 350 years.
Mars has the largest volcano in the Solar System, Olympus Mons, which is nearly three times taller than Mount Everest.

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Stars

A teaspoon of a neutron star would weigh about a billion tonnes on Earth.
The Sun accounts for about 99.86% of the total mass of our Solar System.
Some stars are so large they could fit millions of Suns inside them.
Stars twinkle because their light is bent by turbulence in Earth’s atmosphere.
When massive stars die, they can explode as supernovae, briefly outshining entire galaxies.
White dwarfs are the leftover cores of stars that have exhausted their nuclear fuel.
The colour of a star reveals its temperature, with blue stars being hotter than red ones.
The closest star to Earth, after the Sun, is Proxima Centauri, about 4.24 light-years away.
Binary star systems, where two stars orbit each other, are more common than single-star systems like ours.
Red giants form when stars like the Sun swell late in life before shedding their outer layers.
Supernova explosions scatter elements like iron and carbon, essential for life, across the cosmos.

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Galaxies

The Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy are on a collision course and will merge in about 4.5 billion years.
Most galaxies, including ours, have supermassive black holes at their centres.
There are estimated to be over two trillion galaxies in the observable universe.
The light from distant galaxies shows us how they looked billions of years ago.
Elliptical galaxies are generally older and have less gas for forming new stars.
The Milky Way is about 100,000 light-years across and contains over 100 billion stars.
Spiral galaxies, like ours, are shaped by density waves that create bright arms of stars and gas.
Irregular galaxies often form when galaxies collide and merge.
The nearest major galaxy to the Milky Way is Andromeda, visible with the naked eye from dark skies.
Galaxies are bound together by dark matter, which outweighs visible matter five to one.

Black Holes

Black holes do not suck in everything around them; objects must cross their event horizon to be trapped.
Time slows dramatically near a black hole due to its immense gravity.
The first image of a black hole was captured in 2019 by the Event Horizon Telescope.
Some theories suggest that black holes could lead to other universes or wormholes.
Hawking radiation predicts that black holes slowly lose mass and can eventually evaporate.
Supermassive black holes can be billions of times heavier than the Sun.
Matter falling into a black hole releases enormous energy as it heats up and emits X-rays.
Mini black holes could have formed in the early universe, though none have yet been found.
At the centre of the Milky Way lies Sagittarius A*, a supermassive black hole about four million times the Sun’s mass.
Nothing, not even light, can escape once it crosses a black hole’s event horizon.

Space Travel

Humans have only visited the Moon, but probes have travelled beyond our Solar System.
The International Space Station travels around Earth roughly every 90 minutes.
Astronauts grow slightly taller in space because of the lack of gravity compressing their spines.
The first human in space, Yuri Gagarin, orbited Earth in 1961.
Spacecraft must reach at least 11.2 kilometres per second to escape Earth’s gravity.
The Voyager probes, launched in 1977, are the farthest human-made objects from Earth.
The Apollo 11 mission in 1969 landed the first humans on the Moon.
Re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere generates heat of over 1,500°C due to air compression.
Space debris, including old satellites, poses a growing risk to missions in low Earth orbit.
Private companies like SpaceX are developing reusable rockets to reduce launch costs.
Future missions aim to establish permanent human bases on the Moon and Mars.

Telescopes

The Hubble Space Telescope has captured light from galaxies billions of light-years away.
Radio telescopes can detect signals from distant pulsars and quasars invisible to optical telescopes.
The James Webb Space Telescope can see infrared light, revealing stars hidden in cosmic dust.
Galileo’s first telescope magnified objects only about 30 times, yet it revolutionised astronomy.
Modern telescopes use adaptive optics to correct for atmospheric distortion in real time.
Space telescopes avoid atmospheric interference, producing clearer images than ground-based ones.
The largest optical telescopes on Earth use mirrors over 10 metres in diameter.
Interferometry combines signals from multiple telescopes to simulate a much larger one.
The Very Large Telescope in Chile can study exoplanet atmospheres from Earth.
Ancient astronomers used simple sighting tools long before lenses were invented.

Astronauts

Astronauts in orbit see sixteen sunrises and sunsets every day.
Space suits are miniature spacecraft providing oxygen, temperature control, and pressure.
Food in space must be carefully designed to prevent crumbs that could clog equipment.
Astronauts exercise daily in microgravity to prevent bone and muscle loss.
Spacewalks are meticulously planned and can last up to eight hours.
Astronauts train underwater to simulate the weightlessness of space.
Microgravity affects how fluids move in the body, making faces look puffy.
Sleeping in space involves strapping oneself to prevent floating around.
Long missions can alter astronauts’ vision due to fluid pressure on the eyes.
The first woman in space was Valentina Tereshkova in 1963.
Astronauts often describe a powerful emotional response called the 'overview effect' when viewing Earth from orbit.

Cosmic Phenomena

Gamma-ray bursts are the most energetic explosions known, releasing more energy in seconds than the Sun will in its lifetime.
Dark matter makes up most of the universe’s mass but cannot be seen directly.
Pulsars are rapidly spinning neutron stars that emit beams of radiation like cosmic lighthouses.
The cosmic microwave background is the faint afterglow of the Big Bang.
Solar flares can disrupt satellites and cause stunning auroras on Earth.
Dark energy is causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate.
Quasars are incredibly bright objects powered by supermassive black holes.
Nebulae are vast clouds of gas and dust where new stars are born.
Gravitational waves, ripples in spacetime, were first detected in 2015.
Cosmic rays are high-energy particles that constantly bombard Earth from space.
Supernova remnants can form beautiful nebulae, such as the Crab Nebula.

Time & Relativity

Einstein’s theory of relativity shows that time passes slower in stronger gravitational fields.
Astronauts on the International Space Station experience time slightly slower than people on Earth.
Gravity bends light, a phenomenon called gravitational lensing.
Moving close to the speed of light causes time dilation, where seconds stretch into minutes.
GPS satellites must account for relativistic time differences to maintain accuracy.
At speeds near light, mass increases and time slows relative to stationary observers.
Twin paradox thought experiments illustrate how time dilation affects moving travellers.
The warping of spacetime is responsible for the force we perceive as gravity.
Time passes more slowly near black holes because of extreme gravitational effects.
Relativity allows for theoretical scenarios like wormholes and time travel, though none observed yet.

Exoplanets

Thousands of exoplanets have been discovered orbiting distant stars.
Some exoplanets orbit two suns, much like the fictional planet Tatooine.
Super-Earths are rocky planets larger than Earth but smaller than Neptune.
Astronomers detect exoplanets by observing tiny dips in starlight as planets pass in front of their stars.
The habitable zone is the region around a star where liquid water could exist on a planet’s surface.
Hot Jupiters are gas giants that orbit extremely close to their stars.
Some exoplanets have dayside temperatures hotter than stars.
Kepler-186f was the first Earth-sized planet discovered in a star’s habitable zone.
Planets can form in discs of gas and dust around young stars over millions of years.
Rogue planets drift through space without orbiting any star.
Future telescopes may analyse exoplanet atmospheres for signs of life.