Top 20 Amazing Facts About Space You Should Know

Space is mysterious and beautiful, understand it more with this list of 20 interesting facts about space, planets, moons and stars. Enjoy!

1.    Mercury and Venus are the only two planets in our solar system that do not have any moons.

2.    If a star passes too close to a black hole, it can be torn apart.

3.    The hottest planet in our solar system is Venus. Most people often think that it would be Mercury, as it’s the closest planet to the sun. This is because Venus has a lot of gasses in its atmosphere, which causes the “Greenhouse Effect”.

4.    The solar system is around 4.6 billion years old. Scientist estimate that it will probably last another 5000 million years

5.    Enceladus, one of Saturn’s smaller moons, reflects some 90% of the sunlight, making it more reflective than snow!

6.    The highest mountain known to man is the Olympus Mons, which is located on Mars. It’s peak is 15 miles (25KM) high, making it nearly 3 times higher than Mt Everest.

7.    The Whirlpool Galaxy (M51) was the very first celestial object to be identified as being spiral.

8.    A light year is the distance covered by light in a single year, this is equivalent to 5.88 trillion miles (9.5 trillion KM)!

9.    The width of the Milky Way is around 100,000 light years.

10.  The Sun is over 300,000 times larger than Earth.

11.  Footprints and tire tracks left by astronauts on the moon will stay there forever as there is no wind to blow them away.

12.  Because of lower gravity, a person who weighs 100kg on earth would only weigh 38kg on the surface of Mars.

13.  Scientists believe there are 67 moons that orbit Jupiter, however only 53 of these have been named.

14.  The Martian day is 24 hours 39 minutes and 35 seconds.

15.  NASA’s Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) declared that they have found evidence of significant amounts of water on the Earth’s Moon.

16.  The Sun makes a full rotation once every 25-35 days.

17.  Venus is the only planet that spins backwards relative to the other planets.

18.  The force of gravity can sometimes cause comets to tear apart.

19.  It is thanks to the Sun and our own moons gravity that we have high and low tides.

20.  Pluto is smaller than the Earth’s moon!

Source: thefactsite . com