Interesting Facts About Astronomy

By Owen Jones_

Astronomy is an interesting science to most people because it is stuffed with many fun astronomy facts. Everything from the size and temperature of our own star, the Sun, to the make-up of distant planets has been established. All of this information can be retold to entertain and enlighten your friends.

The Sun is a great source of astronomy fun facts. Our own star, which provides us with all our heat and light is between 91 and 94.5 million miles from Earth. It’s not that nobody has measured the precise distance. It’s because the Earth revolves around the Sun in an elliptical, uneven, orbit, so the distance varies depending on where the Earth is situated in that orbit.

The Sun is only an average size star, yet it’s size is another great source of astronomy fun facts. As normal as it is, it accounts for about 98% of all the matter in our solar system. Even with the massive planet of Jupiter on our side, we’re still only a small 2% of non Sun material.

It would take the diameter of about 100 Earths to measure across this average Sun. The solar winds produced by the Sun extends to about 50 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun. In other words, those solar winds reach out about 50 AU’s, with an AU being the distance from the Earth to the sun. That’s quite amazing, isn’t it?.

What about astronomy fun facts that don’t have anything at all to do with the Sun then? How about the Moon? It’s the only object that man has walked on except the Earth until now. And one man actually travelled to the Moon but has never left it. Dr. Eugene Shoemaker really liked the Moon but was not found acceptable as an astronaut. After his death, he was cremated and his ashes were scattered over the Moon by the Lunar Prospector spacecraft in 1999.

There are many more astronomy fun facts about the Moon. It’s the site of what may become the oldest footprint known to man. Neil Armstrong’s giant leap for mankind left a print in the Moon dust that will likely still be there in 10 million years time.

Lots of people, in fact about 13% of those asked in 1988, still believed the Moon to be made of cheese. And finally, the suits worn by the Moon-walking astronauts weighed 180 pounds on Earth but only 30 pounds on the Moon, because of the Moon’s reduced gravity. Talk about losing weight quickly, eh?

Astronomy fun facts aren’t limited to our close astronomical neighbours. Looking at stars is like looking into the past. Some of the stars we see today in the night sky are so far away that their light takes a million years to get to us. Some of the stars you see may really be images of stars a million years old that aren’t even there now. There are more than 1 x 10 ^22 stars in the universe. That’s a 1 followed by 22 zeros. The number is really quite staggering.

There are millions of astronomy fun facts and we could relate them forever. But this article can not. So, please, walk out there and learn about astronomy for yourself.

Fascinated by astronomy? Then please visit our website at: Astronomy Today

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