Venus is much brighter than any other planet or star. At its brightest it can cast shadow, and even be seen during the day time
The dense globules of gas from which stars are born are much larger than the stars they will form. In the Orion nebula, globules have been detected which are 500 times larger than the solar system
Venus is the planet that turns most slowly on its axis. It spins once every 243 Earth days. Since Venus takes 224 Earth days to complete one orbit of the Sun, its days are longer than its years.
The diameter of the star Betelgeuse is more than a quarter the size of our entire solar system.
The diameter of Venus is only about 400 miles less than that of Earth.
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In 1937, the tiny asteroid Hermes passed uncomfortably close to Earth, at a distance of less than twice that of the moon.
In 1981, "M&M'sŪ Chocolate Candies were chosen by the first space shuttle astronauts to be included in their food supply. "M&M'sŪ are now on permanent display at the space food exhibit of the National Air & Space Museum in Washington, D.C..
In 1992, a yo-yo was brought into space by astronaut Jeffry Hoffman on the space shuttle Atlantis.
In 1995, a National Aeronautics and Space Administration employee bought six plastic owls at Wal-Mart to protect the space shuttle from woodpeckers.
In 435 B.C., the Greek philosopher Anaxagoras suggested that the sun was not just a small glowing circle of light. He maintained that it was a glowing rock a hundred miles across. For that outrageous statement, he was exiled from Athens.
In astronomy, a white dwarf is the dense, burned-out remains of a star; a stellar corpse.
In October 1991, astronomers at Cambridge, England, discovered one of the dimmest stars ever seen. It is relatively close to Earth, but so dim 10,000 times fainter than the Sun that it is visible only with a large telescope
In order to become an astronaut, applicants to NASA's Mercury Space program in 1959 were required to be in a branch of the military; be under 40 years old and shorter than 5 feet, 11 inches; demonstrate perfect eyesight and excellent physical condition; hold a bachelor's degree or equivalent in engineering; be a qualified jet pilot and have logged at least 1,500 hours of flying time.
In the constellation Cygnus, there is a double star, one of whose components has such a high surface gravity that light cannot escape from it. It is Cygnus X-1, which many astronomers believe to be the first "black hole" to be detected.
When astronauts first shaved in space, their weightless whiskers floated up to the ceiling. A special razor had to be developed which drew the whiskers in like a vacuum cleaner.
When the Apollo 12 astronauts landed on the moon, the impact caused the moon's surface to vibrate for 55 minutes. The vibrations were picked up by laboratory instruments, leading geologists to theorize that the moon's surface is composed of fragile layers of rock.
The discovery of Neptune was announced in 1846. But when astronomers checked previous records, they found the record of an observation of the planet as far back as 1795 by astronomers who, believing it to be a star, recorded the position routinely.
When the first pulsar signal was detected in 1967, it was thought that its signals might be a message from an alien civilization deep in space. The signal was jokingly labeled "LGM," for "little green men."
The Earth is the most dense planet five times denser than water, while Saturn is the least dense. It has a density 0.7 times that of water.
When we look at the farthest visible star we are looking 4 billion years into the past the light from that star, traveling at 186,000 miles a second, has taken many years to reach us.
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