Portal:Stars/Did you know/archive
... that, if the
Voyager spacecraft
travelled at its current speed in the direction of
Proxima Centauri
, the
nearest star to the Sun
, it would take around 80,000 years to arrive?
... that the
one of the largest known star
,
VY Canis Majoris
, is nearly 1800 times bigger than our
Sun
?
... that
our galaxy
is estimated to contain 200-400 billion stars, more than the number of humans that have
ever lived
?
... the brightest stellar event in recorded history was
a supernova in the year 1006
, which was bigger and brighter than
Venus
for three months?
...
Sirius
'
s name probably comes from a
Greek
word meaning “sparkling”, or “scorching”?
... the
Great Red Spot
— a storm on Jupiter that has been going on for 300 years — is so big that dozens of Earths would fit into it?
...
Earth
is the only planet not named after a
Roman
or
Greek
god?
... the temperature on
Mercury
varies so extremely that it will rise up to 430 °C during the day and drop as low as -140 °C at night?
... a
neutron star
has such
density
that a pinhead of its matter would weigh more than biggest of supertankers?
... the
Sun
loses 360 million tonnes of material each day, yet it will glow for 5 billion more years?