Infinity-Science

Earth is the only planet not named after a gods.

The sun is 330,330 times larger than the Earth. The longest possible eclipse of the sun is 7.31 minutes.

All the planets in our solar system could fit inside Jupiter.

The highest mountain discovered is the Olympus Mons, which is located on Mars. Olympus Mons compared to Mount Everest, its peak is 16 miles (25 km) high, making it nearly 3 times higher than Mount Everest. And not only is it tall, but it’s also 374,015 ft² (114,000 m²) wide – that’s an area the size of Arizona!

Footprints left on the Moon won’t disappear as there is no wind.

A light year is the distance that light can travel in one year. It works out at about 10 million million kilometres (6 million million miles)!

The Sun makes a full rotation once every 25 – 35 days.

Pluto is smaller than the United States. If you were to walk around the equator of Pluto it would be the same distance as walking from London to Denver (well, give or take 56 miles).

Every atom in your body was once part of a star.

Mark Twain was born around the time when Halley’s Comet passed the earth and he predicted that he would die during its next visit. He wrote “here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together” He died the day after Halley’s Comet returned.

The Whirlpool Galaxy (M51) was the very first celestial object to be identified as being spiral.

Neptune’s Great Dark Spot The Great Dark Spot in the southern atmosphere of Neptune was first discovered in 1989 by the Voyager 2 spacecraft. It was an incredibly large rotating storm system with winds of upto 1,500 miles per hour, the strongest winds recorded on any planet. How such powerful winds were discovered on a planet so far from the sun is still considered a mystery to this day.

750 light years from Earth. TrEs-2b is the darkest planet ever found. It is the size of Jupiter & even blacker than coal. It absorbs almost 100% of light that falls on it.

The moon

ASTEROID

SUN

Comet

THE SOLAR SYSTEM To know exactly what we mean when we say "solar system" it is important to break it down into the two words that comprise the expression. Firstly, the term "solar" is simply a word that means "of the Sun." Secondly, a system is just a collection of objects that interact to form a whole. Thus, putting the two words together provides the following definition: The solar system is a group of objects that interact with one another, the fundamental interaction for each object being the one it has with the Sun. There are many different types of objects found in the solar system: a star, planets, moons, dwarf planets, comets, asteroids, gas, and dust. In terms of the numbers of each of these objects, our current knowledge is as follows: 1 star (The Sun)8 planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune)5 dwarf planets (Pluto, Ceres, Haumea, Makemake, and Eris)181 moons566,000 asteroids3,100 comets In terms of mass, the Sun comprises over 99.8% of the Solar System, with the planet Jupiter accounting for most of the remaining mass. HOW THE OBJECTS IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM INTERACT All objects in the Solar System orbit the Sun; that is, they move around the Sun in elliptical paths. Moreover, the orbits of these objects lie roughly in the same plane, called the ecliptic plane. The mechanism that causes the orbit of objects in the Solar System is one of the fundamental forces in nature: gravity. While the natural tendency for objects in the Solar System is to continue in a straight line of motion, the Sun exerts a force (gravity) on each object and therefore “bends” the straight path into a curved one. Additionally, other objects in the Solar System are massive enough to exert gravitational forces significant enough to alter the orbit of smaller objects. For example, the Earth’s gravity is strong enough to keep the Moon in orbit around the Earth. THE SIZE OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM Though it is common for most people to believe that the edge of the Solar System is that of Pluto’s orbit, this is far from the truth. Over the course of the the 20th century scientists not only hypothesized the size of the Solar System extends to almost 2 light years – that’s 125,000 times the distance from the Sun to the Earth – but also that there are many objects beyond Pluto. Scientist now believe that there are two major regions beyond Pluto. The first is the Kuiper Belt, a region of asteroids similar to the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and the Oort Cloud, a spherical region that contains numerous comets.

If Earth stopped for 1 second and you weren't belt-buckled to the Earth, you would fall over and roll 800 mph due east... killing everyone.

The Great Dark Spot in the southern atmosphere of Neptune was first discovered in 1989 by the Voyager 2 spacecraft. It was an incredibly large rotating storm system with winds of upto 1,500 miles per hour, the strongest winds recorded on any planet. 🗯