Astronomy Online

Posts Tagged ‘astronomy facts’

For many people astronomy is an interesting science filled with many astronomy fun facts. Everything from the size and temperature of our own star, the Sun, to the makeup of distant planets is recorded. All of this information can be recalled to entertain and enlighten people.

The Sun is a great source of astronomy fun facts. Our own star that supplies our heat and light is between 91 and 94.5 million miles from Earth. It’s not that nobody knows for certain. It’s that the Earth orbits the sun in an elliptical, uneven, orbit. The distance varies depending on where the Earth lies in that orbit.

  Astronomy fun facts about our average sized sun’s size.  As average as it is it accounts for about 98% of all the matter in the solar system.  Everything else, counting the earth and all the planets, is a tiny 2%.  It would take about 100 Earths to make it across this average sun.  The sun blows its solar wind out to 50 times the distance between the star and our earth.

Shall we turn to some astronomy fun facts that don’t have to do with the sun?  How about the moon?  It’s the only other space object, besides the earth, over which man has walked.  One fellow went there and stayed.  Dr. Eugene Shoemaker didn’t make the cut for astronauts.  After his death he was cremated and his ashes scattered over the moon by the Lunar Prospector spacecraft in 1999.

There are more astronomy fun facts about the moon. It’s the site of what may become the oldest footprint. Neil Armstrong’s “giant leap for mankind” left a print in the moon dust that will like still be there in 10 million years. Many people, in fact about 13% of those asked in 1988, still believe the moon is 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. Talk about an instant diet.

Fun facts about astronomy aren’t limited to our close neighbors. The stars we see are a gateway to the past.  It can take millions of years foe light from some stars to reach us.  Some of those stars you see may really be images of stars a million years old that aren’t even there in the present.  There are over 1 x 10 ^22 stars in the universe.  That’s a 1 followed by 22 zeros.  The number is staggering.

Astronomy fun facts can go on forever. But this article can’t. So get out there and learn about astronomy.

There must be a lot of astronomy facts right? Consider that there are somewhere around 1 x 10 ^22 stars in the universe, that’s a one followed by 22 zeros. Think about this, there are planets orbiting many of those stars. Then consider all the moons that orbit the planets, the comets and asteroids, the galaxies these stars form, the nebulae and black holes and everything else out there. It’s a lot to consider. This article, which presents astronomy facts, certainly won’t contain every astronomy fact. Walked is here, however, is interesting.

Let’s take a look at this subset of astronomy facts – the brightest stars as seen from Earth. Let’s ignore the sun, it’s too close. It’s so bright as seen from Earth that it washes out all the other stars in the sky during a phenomenon called “daylight”. Keep in mind that in the scale for the magnitudes given, lower numbers are brighter. The sun would be about -26.73, while the full moon is -12.6. And now to the top five.

#5 goes to Vega, Arabic for vulture. As seen from Earth its magnitude is .03. Just because a star looks brighter from Earth doesn’t mean it’s really brighter. Our sun, for example, appears brighter than any other star, even though it’s not one of the brightest in the universe.  That’s because it’s so close.

#4 goes to Rigel Kentaurus, or foot of the centaur. It’s about four light years from Earth with a magnitude of -.01.

At #3, remember this is set in stone as one of the many astronomy facts we have, is Arcturus. The name means guardian of the bear in Greek. This star is 37 light years from us.

#2 is Canopus. Of these top five Canopus, a Greek name for the pilot of the vessel Argo made famous in the stories about Jason and the Argonauts, is the brightest. But it’s 313 light years from Earth so it’s just second on this list as seen from Earth. It has a -.62 magnitude as seen by humans on this planet.

#1 is Sirius, meaning scorching in Greek. It’s also called the Dog Star because it’s the brightest star in the constellations Canis Major (the Big Dog). At only 9 light-years away from Earth it is the second closest in these top five. But from Earth it has a magnitude of -1.44. That makes it easily the brightest star as seen in the night sky.

There are many more astronomy facts out there. But consider it next time you see the stars in the night sky.