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.
The sun is only average size for a star, yet it’s size is another terrific source of astronomy fun facts. As average as it is it accounts for about 98% of all the matter in the solar system. Even with Jupiter on our side, we’re still a measly 2% of non ?the sun? stuff. It would take about 100 Earths to make it across this average sun. The solar wind produced by the sun extends to about 50 times the distance from the Earth to the sun from the sun. In other words those solar winds go out about 50 AU’s, with an AU being the distance from the Earth to the sun. That’s amazing.
What about astronomy fun facts that don’t have to do with the sun? How about the moon? It’s the only non-Earth object upon which man has walked. And one human man actually traveled to the moon but never left it. Dr. Eugene Shoemaker loved the moon but was rejected as an astronaut. 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.
Astronomy fun facts aren’t limited to our close neighbors. 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 light takes a million years to reach us from them. 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.
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