Random Space Facts

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.