Science Facts About Astronomy

Only 55% of Americans know that the sun is a star.

Summer on Uranus lasts for 21 years.

There are approximately 3,500 astronomers in the U.S. - but over 15,000 astrologers.

The earth is .02 degrees hotter during a full moon.

Saturn's rings stretch about 550,000 miles in circumference but are only 30 feet to half a mile thick—incredibly thin for their vast size.

The sun is 330,330 times larger than the earth.

Tidal forces between the Earth and Moon are slowing the Earth down and pushing the Moon further away.

Jupiter emits powerful radio bursts that amateur astronomers can detect with a simple shortwave radio antenna, making it one of the few planets you can 'listen' to from Earth.

There is a mysterious and loud radio signal known as 'the space roar' that has yet to be explained.

Since 2017, astronomers have discovered dozens of potentially habitable exoplanets, bringing the total to over 60 worlds that might support life.

The ashes of the man who discovered Pluto are currently en route to dwarf planet, scheduled to arrive on the 14th of July, 2015.

The center of the galaxy tastes like raspberries and smells like rum, according to astronomers.

Billions of neutrinos pass unnoticed through your body every second.

An international team of astronomers has spotted the farthest known gravitational lens and, as Albert Einstein predicted, it is a galaxy that deflects and intensifies the light of a much further object.

The dwarf planet Ceres, located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, baffled scientists when NASA's Dawn spacecraft photographed mysterious bright spots on its surface in 2015. The gleaming patches sparked wild theories—from ice volcanoes to alien bases—before researchers discovered they were actually salt deposits left behind by briny water seeping up from an underground ocean.

Jupiter's magnetosphere is the largest single structure inside the Solar System. If you could see it with your eyes, it would appear larger than our full Moon.

Every other planet in the solar system can fit between Earth and the Moon — with roughly 4,400 km to spare.