Galaxies come in many different shapes which are determined by the effects of past gravitational encounters with other galaxies. Our Milky Way is a spiral-type galaxy.
Galileo became totally blind shortly before his death, probably because of the damage done to his eyes during his many years of looking at the Sun through a telescope.
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Ganymede, Jupiter's largest satellite, is actually larger than the planet Mercury. It is 3,275 miles in diameter.
The Sun produces more energy every minute than all the energy used on Earth in a whole year.
The Sun provides our planet with 126,000,000,000,000 horsepower of energy every day. This means that 54,000 horsepower is delivered to every man, woman, and child on Earth in each 24-hour period.
Phobos, one of the moons of Mars, is so close to its parent planet that it could not be seen by an observer standing at either of Mars poles. Phobos make three complete orbits around Mars every day.
The Sun’s solar wind is so powerful, it has large effects on the tails of comets, and scientists have determined that it even has measurable effects on the trajectories of spacecraft.
Physicists now believe the universe to be three billion years younger than previously thought. New information gathered by the Hipparcos satellite, combined with a reanalysis of other distance data, has enabled researchers to refine the lower age limit of the universe to 9.6 billion years.
The Sun's total lifetime as a star capable of maintaining a life-bearing Earth is about 11 billion years. Nearly half the time has passed.
Polaris, in the tail of the Little Bear constellation, is the closest visible star to true north and thus is referred to as the North Star. By about 2100 A.D., the wobble of Earth's axis will slowly begin pointing the North Pole away from Polaris.
The surface of Venus is actually hotter than Mercury's, despite being nearly twice as far from the Sun.
Portuguese wine bottled in 1811 is called "comet wine." Its excellent quality is believed to be due to the Great Comet of that year. The term "comet wine" is often used for any wine made in the year of an important comet.
The surface temperature of a neutron star is about 1.8 million degrees Fahrenheit.
Proxima Centauri is the closest star to Earth (outside our solar system), but it is too small to be seen without a telescope
The tails of comets generally point away from the Sun whether the comet is approaching the sun or receding.
Quasars are amazingly bright objects. A quasar generates 100 times as much light as the whole of our galaxy in a space not much larger than our solar system.
The Tarantula nebula is the largest known. It is 160,000 light-years away. If it was as close to us as the Orion nebula, its light would cast shadows on Earth.
Saturn has the greatest number of known moons of any planet in the solar system. Its largest moon is named Titan.
The Tarantula nebula is thought to contain a huge star of over 1,000 times the mass of the Sun, ten times more massive than any star in the Milky Way.
Saturn is much farther away from the Sun than Earth is. It takes Saturn approximately 29.48 Earth years to circle the Sun. Three spacecraft have visited Saturn: Pioneer 11 (1979), Voyager 1 (1980), and Voyager 2 (1981).
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