Some random facts about things in outer space:
The planet Venus rotates in retrograde motion, meaning the
sun rises in the west and sets in the east.
The surface temperature of Venus is upwards of 900 degrees Fahrenheit,
and the atmospheric pressure is similar to the pressure 3,000 feet deep in the
ocean.
The combined mass of all of the asteroids orbiting between
Mars and Jupiter is less than that of the Earth’s moon. One of the asteroids, Ceres, was considered a
planet for about 50 years before scientists developed the concept of asteroids.
Earth produces heat…90 percent of which is created by the
decay of radioactive elements such as uranium and thorium. Earth’s continents shift by a few centimeters
every year…about as much of a rate as fingernails grow.
Saturn’s famous rings are hundreds of thousands of miles
across, but only a few yards thick, for the most part. Saturn is the least dense of all the
planets. It would float in the ocean, if
there could be a large enough ocean to dunk the planet into. The planet spins so fast that it bulges at
the equator and is flattened at the poles.
And lastly, Saturn generates as much heat as it receives from the sun…through
friction from droplets of liquid helium falling through the planet’s metallic
layer.
The Earth’s moon has over a million craters that are over
one half mile wide. One of the effects
of the tides of the Earth is that the moon drifts about 1.6 inches farther away
from the earth every year. The rotation
of the Earth slows slightly each year because of those same tidal effects.
Summer day temperatures on Mars can reach as much as 80
degrees Fahrenheit. Mars definitely had
a wet past, and still has water both on the surface and under the surface in
the form of ice.
The Hubble Space Telescope has over 600 craters and chips
from meteorite impacts. Meteors (or
shooting stars) are usually seen when they are 45 to 75 miles high in the
atmosphere, and can collide with the Earth at speeds of up to 44 miles per
second.
The interior or Jupiter is home to a rarity: liquid metallic hydrogen. Jupiter emits 70 percent more heat than it
absorbs from the sun. Of it’s 63 known
moons, at least one has active volcanoes, one is the largest moon in the solar
system, and one may have oceans of water underneath a smooth surface layer.
