Astronomy Facts & Trivia - Page 2

Epsilon Aurigae The star Epsilon Aurigae dims every 27 years due to a mysterious dark object eclipsing it periodically. Submitted by: Erik Halenkamp - Naples, Italy
Great Red Spot The 'Great Red Spot' - a storm on Jupiter that has been going on for 300 years - is so big that dozens of Earths would fit into it.
Blackhole A supermassive blackhole is believed to be present in the centre of nearly every galaxy, including our own Milky Way.
Mercury Dawn Dusk On Mercury during the day, the Sun rises, stops, about-turns and eventually sets where it rose.sciensational.com
Galaxies Everything moves: Planets move within the Solar System, which moves within Milky Way Galaxy, which moves within The Local Group of Galaxies, which moves towards Virgo Cluster.
venus Venus and Uranus are the only planets that rotate clockwise (retrograde rotation.)
Uranus All 27 of Uranus moons are named after William Shakespeare and Alexander Pope characters.
planet jupiter With 63 moons, Jupiter has the largest number of moons.
jupiter, saturn, uranus and neptune Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are made up of just gas with no solid surface to land on.sciensational.com
mercury The temperature on Mercury varies so extremely that it will rise up to 430C during the day and drop as low as -140C at night.
VY Canis Majoris and Sun The largest known star VY Canis Majoris is so big that if our Sun were a ball 117 cm (46 in) wide, Canis Majoris would be 2.25 kilometres (1.3 miles) wide.
Pistol Star The Pistol Star is the most luminous star known - 10 million times the power of the Sun and as big as the size of Earth's entire orbit around the Sun. Submitted by: damandude - Missouri, United States
Mars Mars is red because its soil is very rusty (iron oxide.)
Constellation Crux Crux is the smallest of modern constellations, with only 4 bright stars.sciensational.com
Constellation Hydra The largest of modern constellations is Hydra.
Earth is the only planet not named after a Roman or Greek god.
Saturn's moon Titan Saturn's moon Titan has hundreds of times more oil and natural gas than all the known reserves on Earth.
Interstellar space is not complete vacuum: there are a few hydrogen atoms per cubic centimetre.
If a pinhead-size piece of the Sun were placed on Earth, one would have to stand as far as 145 kilometres (90 miles) away to be safe.sciensational.com
diamond star lucy The star "Lucy" in constellation Centaurus is actually a huge cosmic diamond of 10 billion trillion trillion carats.