Universe

The Universe is everything. As we know it includes all of space and all the matter and energy that space contains. All existing matter and space considered as a whole; the cosmos. The universe is believed to be at least 10 billion light years in diameter and contains a vast number of galaxies. It has been expanding since its creation in the Big Bang about 13 billion years ago.

Galaxies

Galaxies are vast systems of gravity-bound gas, dust, dark matter, and anything from a million to a trillion stars.

The word galaxy comes from the Greek word galaxias (γαλαξίας), which means "milky" and refers to the Milky Way. Galaxies vary in size, with dwarfs having only a few hundred million (108) stars and giants having one hundred trillion (1014) stars, all of which orbit the galactic center.

There are 3 types of galaxies: Elliptical, Spiral and Irregular.

Elliptical Galaxies

The elliptical galaxies have the shape of a flattened spheroid, and they revolve relatively slowly around their axes. Giants, dwarfs, and red and yellow stars made up the majority of the elliptical galaxies; blue and white supergiants were absent. Elliptical galaxies have essentially no gas left because stars have swallowed it up. Most of the stars are really old (1010 years old). Ellipsoidal galaxies have a modest incline in their luminosity from the center to the edge. If these galaxies revolve at all, it rotates incredibly slowly.

Spiral Galaxies

Our galaxy, the Milky Way, and other spiral galaxies produce extraordinarily brilliant, flattened galaxies. They are made up of a shiny core from which the long branches spiral outward. Ordinary (normal) galaxies and barred galaxies are two categories of spiral galaxies (transverse spiral galaxies). There are frequently regions orbiting the galaxy that are arranged into spiral arms and contain sparkling newborn stars.

Irregular Galaxies

A unique category of galaxies known as irregular galaxies lacks both symmetry and the typical indications of other galaxies. They are glossy and light in weight. Their atypical forms suggest that they are submerged in interstellar materials and do not rotate. They include a lot of blue stars, indicating that they are newly produced young stars. They are identified by the letter Ir.

Facts About Galaxies

1. There are reportedly 100 billion galaxies in the universe, according to Hubble.

2. About 12.5 billion years ago, the Milky Way was born, and it has been expanding ever since.

3. Every year, the galaxy gives birth to roughly 7 new stars, according to experts.

4. The Milky Way is one of around 40 galaxies that make up the Local Group, a group of galaxies.

5. A Local Supercluster, which includes several clusters of galaxies like the Local Group, is a subset of the Local Group. The distance between two Local Superclusters is roughly 10 million light-years.

6. In relation to the radiation from the Cosmic Microwave Background, the Milky Way moves through space at a rate of around 343 miles per second.

7. About 35% of all galaxies in the universe are elliptical.

8. A elliptical galaxy with 10 billion stars is called NGC 6186.

9. The majority of galaxies in the cosmos (62% of them are spiral galaxies), are spiral galaxies.

10. The majority of galaxies have diameters of 1,000–10,000 parsecs. An astronomical unit of length is a parsec. One parsec is roughly equivalent to 31 trillion kilometers or 19 trillion miles, to put the amount into context.

11. Dwarf galaxies make up the majority of galaxies in the cosmos. When compared to other galaxies, these are relatively small, being only a few billion stars and around one hundredth the size of the Milky Way.

12. Prior to 2021, the catchy z8 GND 5296, which is located roughly 13.1 billion light years away, was the most distant and ancient galaxy ever discovered. A group of astronomers from the University of Texas at Austin under the direction of Steven Finkelstein made the discovery in October 2013.

13. As of 2021, GN-z11 is the furthest and most ancient galaxy yet found. Astronomers were able to peer into the distant past when the bright galaxy was visible 13.4 billion years ago thanks to NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.

14. The observable cosmos has around 170 billion galaxies.

15. The existence of dark matter was confirmed through research on the Andromeda Galaxy. Vera Rubin, an American astronomer, noticed that the galaxy's motion appeared to defy Newton's Laws of Motion.

16. Immanuel Kant, a German philosopher, first used the term "island universes" to denote the separation of galaxies.

17. Lenticular galaxies are described as being halfway between elliptical and spiral galaxies. They have revolving star discs without spiral arms and resemble "lenses."

18. It is thought that the galactic centre of practically all massive galaxies contains a black hole. There is one even in the Milky Way. They are believed to be at the centre of every galaxy because they may have pulled the material that began the formation of galaxies with such strong forces.

19. Black holes are very strong fields from which not even light can elude. The majority of them are the remains of enormous, dead stars.

20. Black holes eat everything that is nearby. With that, it ate everything nearby. Those outside of its range began to revolve around it, creating a brand-new galaxy.

21. John A. Wheeler first used the phrase "black hole" in 1967.

22. Messier 31 or M31, generally known as the Andromeda Galaxy, is a spiral galaxy that is situated roughly 2.5 million light-years (2.41019 miles) from Earth. It is the closest spiral galaxy to the Milky Way, which contains our solar system, and is situated in the Andromeda constellation. The Local Group's biggest galaxy, it is also. 

23. Every galaxy has its own distinctive qualities. The Galaxy of Fireworks is one of them. Due to the quantity of newly formed stars, this galaxy is also called a starburst galaxy. At least ten supernovae have been identified in the galaxy, giving it the nickname "Fireworks galaxy" due to the large number of supernova explosions that have been documented there in just the previous century.

24. Unlike spiral galaxies with a grand architecture, flocculent spiral galaxies lack clearly defined spiral arms. They seem to have several broken arms instead. This flocculent spiral nebula M63, often known as the Sunflower galaxy, is one example.

25. According to estimates, the Milky Way galaxy alone has billions of solar systems.

26. A galaxy that produces stars at a rapid rate due to an extremely large amount of gas and dust is known as a "starburst" galaxy.

27. The Milky Way galaxy was initially created by stars forming clusters on discs of primordial gases. As our galaxy collided with nearby galaxies, it attracted some of their materials, causing the stars to expand in size.

28. Inventor of the classification scheme for galaxies is American astronomer Edwin Hubble.

29. The Andromeda and Milky Way galaxies are expected to merge into one super galaxy, which will be by far the biggest galaxy in this region of the universe, in about seven billion years.

30. The largest galaxies, however, have a black hole at their centre rather than a cluster of stars, which is the case for the majority of galaxies.

31. The Coma cluster, located 330 million light-years from Earth, is a collection of hundreds of galaxies that are all located in the same area of the cosmos.

32. A light year is equal to approximately 6 trillion miles or 9 trillion kilometres, and the Milky Way Galaxy has a radius of 52,850 light years.

33. From Earth, 3 to 7 distinct galaxies can be seen. With the unaided eye, one may see the Andromeda Galaxy (M-31), Magellanic Clouds, Milky Way galaxy, Triangulum Galaxy (M-33), Omega Centauri, and the Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy.

Solar System

A solar system former when a star together with the group of celestial bodies that are held by its attraction and revolve around it. Our solar system formed 4.6 billion year ago from the gravitational collapse of a giant interstellar molecular cloud.

Facts About Our Solar System

1. The planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune are all part of our solar system, along with the dwarf planet Pluto, asteroids, and comets.

2. The sun might be filled with 1.3 million planets the size of Earth.

3. The solar nebula, a cloud of gas and dust, is where our solar system was created 4.6 billion years ago. It was most likely started by a shock wave from a nearby supernova explosion.

4. There are well over 700 known planet-star systems.

5. It only takes the Sun's light 8 minutes to reach Earth.

6. Venus has an average temperature of 460°C, making it the hottest planet, and Uranus has an average temperature of -220°C, making it the coldest planet. The typical temperature on Earth is 15°C. 

7. Both Jupiter and Saturn now have 53 known moons.

8. After the Moon, Venus is the second-brightest object in the night sky.

9. Venus, sometimes known as the morning or evening star, is visible from Earth. The entire planet is covered in yellow sulfuric clouds, which cause sunlight to reflect off the surface.

10. With a radius of 69,911 km and a surface area of 61.42 billion square kilometers, Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system.

11. Mercury is our solar system's smallest planet, with a surface area of 74.8 million square kilometers and a radius of 2,439.7 kilometers.

12. In the solar system, 5 dwarf planets have been identified. Ceres, Makemake, Haumea, Eris, and Pluto are five celestial bodies that are too small to be classified as planets.

13. The winds of Neptune are the fastest in the solar system. Neptune's giant storms could swallow the entire Earth at 2,575 kmph.

Stars

A star is an astronomical object comprising a luminous spheroid of plasma held together by its gravity. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked eye at night, but their immense distances from Earth make them appear as fixed points of light.

Facts About Stars

1. Our Milky Way galaxy contains at least 250 to 500 billion stars.

2. A person with very good eyesight may be able to see 2000-2500 stars at any one time on a truly exceptional night, with no Moon and far from any source of light.

3. Red stars are the "coolest" (least hot) stars in the sky, while blue stars are the hottest.

4. Stars have dark bodies. A black body is an object that absorbs 100% of all electromagnetic radiation (light, radio waves, etc.) that strikes it.

5. There are no green stars in the sky.

6. The surface temperature of our Sun is approximately 5,800 K, or 500 nanometers.

7. Our sun is classified as a dwarf star.

8. The stars don't twinkle. Twinkling is a property of Earth's turbulent atmosphere, not of the stars.

9. With a diameter of 2.9915 billion kilometres, Stephenson 2-18 is the largest star in the Milky Way Galaxy.

10. Our sun has a diameter of 1.3927 million kilometres and a radius of 696,340 kilometres.

11. UY Scuti is the largest known star in the universe, a hypergiant with a radius roughly 1,700 times that of the sun. In other words, a sphere the size of UY Scuti could contain the volume of nearly 5 billion suns.

12. Astronomers have discovered the smallest star known to science: EBLM J0555-57Ab, which is 600 light-years from Earth and about the size of Saturn. Scientists have discovered the smallest star ever discovered; in fact, it is so small that it hardly qualifies as a star at all.

13. Sirius is our universe's brightest star.

14. According to NASA, a new paper published in Nature reports that Hubble has discovered a star that is 12.9 billion years old, implying that it existed when the universe was only 7% of its current age.

15. After 4 and a half to 5 billion years, our Sun will run out of fuel.

16. Traveling to the next closest star, which is about 4.2 light-years away from Earth, would take 70,000 years.

17. Neutron stars can spin at a rate of 600 times per second.

Planets

According to International Astronomical Union, a planet has three qualities or must to three things: i) Must Orbit a Star, ii) Must be large enough to have gravity that forces into spherical shape, iii) Must be large enough to clear its orbit as it revolves around its star.

Facts About Planets

1. Planets are formed by pieces of rock and ice that travel through the galaxy until they become entangled in the gravitational pull of a sun.

2. Kepler 22b, discovered in the Kepler 22 system in 2011, was deemed habitable, similar to Earth 2.0. However, at 600 light-years away, it remains unclear whether this exoplanet can support life.

3. ROXs 42Bb, the largest planet in the universe, is thought to have a radius up to 2.5 times that of Jupiter.

4. Jupiter has a radius of 43,441 miles, which equals 1 RJ .

5. HD 100546 b, a celestial body with a radius of 6.9RJ, is an exoplanet. However, the mass of this planet and other factors appear to indicate that it is a brown dwarf.

6. A brown dwarf is a type of object that exists between a planet and a star.

7. Jupiter has a mass that is approximately 317 times that of Earth.

8. We've been exploring space for over 60 years and have captured close-up images of dozens of celestial objects. We've sent spacecraft to all of our solar system's planets, including Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, as well as two dwarf planets, Pluto and Ceres.

9. On Venus, it snows metal and rains acid.

10. On Mars, the sunset is blue.

11. There is no atmosphere on Mercury. Mercury is not the hottest planet, despite being closest to the sun, because it has no weather or wind.

12. Neptune emits more heat than it receives from the sun.

13. Uranus is the only planet in the solar system that spins on its axis sideways. According to scientists, a collision realigned its orientation.

14. Mars' largest volcano is three times the size of Mount Everest.

15. Jupiter is the solar system's garbage dump. Jupiter attracts the majority of the solar system's asteroids. Many potentially hazardous asteroids are sucked up by Jupiter's gravity field.

16. Saturn is the Milky Way's second-largest and lightest planet. Because it is mostly gas, its low density causes it to float in water.

17. Mercury is our solar system's fastest planet. It travels at a speed of 65,000 kilometers per hour (40,000 miles per hour) faster than Earth. A year on Mercury lasts only 88 days.

18. On Mars, a day lasts 24 hours, 39 minutes, and 35 seconds. Mars orbits the sun slower than Earth, so one Martian year has 687 Earth days.

19. One day on Venus is equivalent to 243 Earth days. One orbit of Venus around the sun takes only 225 Earth days, implying that one day on Venus is 18 Earth days longer.

20. Mars has the world's longest valley. The Valles Marineris is nearly the length of the United States. It is 4,000 kilometers long, which is more than ten times the length of the Grand Canyon.

21. A planet made of diamonds twice the size of Earth exists. 55 Cancri e is a so-called "super-Earth" made of diamonds discovered in 2004 in the Milky Way around a nearby star.

22. In 2013, Mercury was completely mapped. In 2013, the Messenger finished mapping Mercury's surface.

Moons

Facts About Moons

1. Our solar system contains 181 moons. Both Jupiter and Saturn currently have 53 confirmed moons.

2. Every year, the moon moves 4 cm away from Earth.

3. The Earth is 81 times heavier than the moon.

4. The Moon is roughly 27% the size of Earth.

5. The moon used to be a part of the Earth.

6. One moon orbits Neptune in reverse. Triton orbits Neptune in reverse, making it the only large moon in the solar system to do so.

7. Io, Jupiter's moon, is the most active moon in the solar system, with hundreds of volcanoes. It emits plumes that can travel up to 250 miles into the atmosphere.

8. The craters on the moon may be the coldest places in the solar system. The temperatures in the moon's craters in the southern hemisphere never rise above -238°C.

9. Saturn has a moon in the shape of a UFO. Pan is another oddly shaped celestial body in space. The sweeping up of ring material from the Encke gap gives it a walnut-like appearance.

Asteroids

Facts About Asteroids

1. Our Solar System contains 552,894 asteroids and 3,083 comets.

2. Halley's Comet will not be visible again until 2061. Edmond Halley's 1705 discovery was last seen in 1986. This comet appears only once every 75 to 76 years.

3. In 240 B.C., the Chinese began to record Halley's Comet. Following its discovery in 240 B.C., Chinese astronomers began to record its passage after 164 B.C.

4. An asteroid the size of a car enters Earth's atmosphere about once a year. Fortunately, it burns up in the atmosphere before it reaches us.

5. The largest asteroid in the solar system has a diameter of 329 miles. Vesta is 25 times the size of Manhattan.

Miscellaneous

Miscellaneous Facts

1. Scientists believe that celestial phenomena will destroy the Earth within the next billion years.

2. The universe is composed of approximately 68% dark energy, 27% dark matter, and 5% ordinary matter.

3. A modern spacecraft would take 450 million years to reach the centre of our galaxy.

4. The sun accounts for more than 99% of the mass in our galaxy.

5. At 75 mph, driving around one of Saturn's rings would take 258 Earth days.

6. Saturn's rings are made of ice and rock and range in size from 175,000 miles long to 3,200 feet thick.

7. A radio signal from 5 billion light-years away was detected in space by scientists.

8. The Earth did not exist at the time the source transmitted it because it was 5 billion light-years away!

9. The first soft drink consumed in space was Coca-Cola.

10. Sputnik was the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth. The Soviet Union launched it with a single shot on October 4, 1957.

11. The astronaut stool must be returned to Earth via spacecraft.

12. The gravitational pull of a planet is used by scientists to calculate its weight.

13. If two pieces of the same metal come into contact in space, they will permanently bond. Due to the absence of water and air molecules in space, two pieces of the same metal will merge during the cold welding process.

14. Astronomers discovered a massive water vapour cloud about 10 billion light-years away that contains 140 trillion times the mass of water in the Earth's oceans.

15. The International Space Station (ISS) is valued at one billion dollars. It is also the largest manned spacecraft ever launched.

16. The International Space Station recycles 93% of the liquids it receives. Recycling takes 8 days, and a lengthy purification process makes it cleaner than the water people drink at home.

17. It takes 45 minutes to put on a spacesuit. This lengthy procedure will ensure the astronaut's maximum safety, and any mistakes could be fatal.

18. A typical NASA spacesuit costs $12 million. In 2017, NASA faced a suit shortage. Only 11 suits are currently in use, with others constructed years ago.

19. In space, your face would puff up. Our bodily fluids are redistributed in space, resulting in "shrinking" legs and a "puffy" face.

20. There are 88 known constellations. These star patterns can be seen from both the southern and northern hemispheres.

21. In space, you can't use a regular pen. Normal pens use gravity to draw ink to the nib, allowing you to write. Astronauts and scientists, on the other hand, must use a zero-gravity pen.

22. The universe contains more stars than grains of sand on Earth.

23. Diamonds are raining down on Jupiter and Saturn. Both Jupiter and Saturn have high levels of methane in their atmospheres, which results in diamond hailstones. Lightning storms convert methane to soot (carbon), which hardens into graphite chunks and, eventually, diamond.

24. Mars currently has six spacecraft. Mars' only known inhabitants are space rovers and spacecraft.

25. Between Earth and the moon, all of the planets in the solar system could fit.

26. When exposed to space, you could double your size.

27. The first photographed black hole is 3 million times the size of the Earth. It was first photographed in April of this year.

28. Being in space is comparable to catching a cold. Different space conditions would congest your nose and impair your sense of taste.

29. Astronauts will gain 2 inches in space. The absence of gravity causes the discs between the vertebrae to expand, resulting in a slight increase in height. When astronauts return to Earth, gravity compresses their spine and returns them to their normal height.