The Earth moves in its 585-million-mile orbit around the Sun approximately eight times faster than a bullet travels.
Winds ten times stronger than a hurricane on Earth blow around Saturn's equator. Wind speeds can reach 1,100 mph.
The Earth rotates on its axis more slowly in March than in September.
Without using precision instruments, Eratosthenes measured the radius of Earth in the third century B.C., and came within 1 percent of the value determined by today's technology.
The Earth weighs nearly 6,588,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons.
The final resting place for Dr. Eugene Shoemaker – the Moon. The famed U.S. Geological Survey astronomer had trained the Apollo mission astronauts about craters, but never made it into space. Dr. Shoemaker had wanted to be an astronaut but was rejected because of a medical problem. His ashes were placed on board the Lunar Prospector spacecraft before it was launched on January 6, 1998. NASA crashed the probe into a crater on the moon on July 31, 1999, in an attempt to learn if there is water on the Moon.
The first pulsar (a celestial object that emits brief, sharp pulses of radio waves instead of the steady radiation associated with other natural sources), discovered in 1967, never varies in its timing by even as much as a hundred-millionth of a second. Its pulse is registered every 1.33730109 seconds.
The first spacecraft to send back pictures of the far side of the Moon was Luna 3 in October 1959. The photographs covered about 70 percent of the far side.
The first U.S. flag on the moon was deployed by Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin during their historic EVA on July 20, 1969 (at 4 days, 14 hours, and 9 minutes mission-elapsed time).
The footprints left by the Apollo astronauts will not erode since there is no wind or water on the Moon. The footprints should last at least 10 million years.
In the history of the solar system, 30 billion comets have been lost or destroyed. That amounts to only 30 percent of the estimated number that remain.
It has been estimated that at least a million meteors have hit the Earth's land surface, which is only 25 percent of the planet. Every last trace of more than 99 percent of the craters thus formed has vanished, erased by wind, water, and living things.
It is estimated by scientists that the universe contains .0000000000000000000000000000001 grams of matter per cubic centimeter of space. It is also estimated that the universe is 35 billion light years in size, or 210,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles.
It is estimated that within the entire universe there are more than a trillion galaxies.
It takes 100,000 years for a red giant to change into a white dwarf. By astronomical standards, this is practically instantaneous, a mere one-thousandth of the star's life.
Jupiter is much smaller than the Sun. If the Sun was the size of a basketball, 1 foot across, Jupiter would be the size of a table tennis ball 1 inch across.
Jupiter is the largest planet, and it has the shortest day. Although Jupiter has a circumference of 280,000 miles, compared with Earth's 25,000, Jupiter manages to make one turn in 9 hours and 55 minutes.
Jupiter is the planet with the shortest day: slightly under 10 hours. However, its years are 12 times as long as ours.
Jupiter is two-and-a-half times larger than all the other planets, satellites, asteroids, and comets of our solar system combined.
Jupiter spins faster than any other planet. A point on the equator of Jupiter spins faster around the center of the planet at a speed of 28,273 mph. The speed of the spin makes the planet bulge slightly at its equator.
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