These 20 Facts About Space Will Change Everything You Know About The Universe

I love space. I love reading about space, watching space-themed movies, and even went to college to become an astronaut (though changed majors due to height restrictions). Yet even I didn’t know these 20 insanely awesome space facts. From a second Moon, to the length of a photon pregnancy, these facts will surely blow you away!

1.) The 40,000 km-wide Great Red Spot on Jupiter is a storm that’s been brewing for at least the past 200 years. To put it into perspective, the Earth could fit in the Red Spot three times over.

2.) Contrary to popular belief, the Earth has more than one moon. Cruithne (“The Earth’s Second Moon”) is one of six quasi-satellite asteroids that rotate in a near identical orbit to the Earth.

3.) An object the size of Mars collided with the Earth 4.5 billion years ago.

4.) The sun’s temperature is approximately 9,941 Fahrenheit.

5.) The sun is over 300,000 times larger than the Earth.

6.) It takes the average photon 170,000 years to travel from the sun’s core to the surface.

7.) It takes that same photon only 8 minutes to then reach Earth.

8.) Scientists recently discovered a planet lost in the glare of a supernova for 21 years.

9.) Astronauts left a mirror on the Moon’s surface during the Moon landing. Scientists used this mirror to bounce a laser off it and accurately measure the distance to the Earth.

10.) The Sun travels around the galaxy — a journey of 100,000 light years — once every 200 million years.

11.) All of the planets in our solar system could fit in the space between the Earth and the Moon.

12.) Over a thousand planets were discovered in the last 20 years.

13.) Jupiter is two and a half times larger than all the other planets in the solar system combined.

14.) Only three people have died outside our atmosphere.

15.) Mars is the home of Mount Olympus, the tallest volcano in the solar system. At 21 km high, and 60 km wide, it’s roughly the size of Ireland.

16.) Because there’s no atmosphere on the Moon, the 1969 footprints by Apollo 11 are still there today.

17.) A tablespoon of a neutron star would weigh about 10 billion tons.

18.) The sun accounts for 99.86% of all mass in our solar system.

19.) The core of a star reaches 16 million degrees celsius. A single grain of sand this hot would kill a human from 150 km away.

20.) You can see another galaxy with the naked eye: The Andromeda Galaxy, 2.2 million light years away.

(via All That Is Interesting)

Can you believe we actually have SEVEN moons in orbit? Or that even Jupiter could fit between us and the Moon? I can’t, and I just told you!

These 20 Facts About Space Will Change Everything You Know About The Universe