Space Trivia

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The Great Red Spot on Jupiter is a swirling hurricane of gases. The winds in the hurricane reach 21,700 miles per hour (35,000 kilometers per hour).

More than 100,000 asteroids lie in a belt between Mars and Jupiter.

The weight of the Sun is two billion billion billion tons, about 333,420 times that of the Earth.

The heaviest known meteorite to fall to Earth – the Hoba West meteorite – lies where it fell in Africa. Weighing about 60 tons, it is not likely to be moved.

More than 20 million meteroids enter Earth's atmosphere every day--but most are no bigger than a speck of dust.

The winds of Venus blow steadily at 109 miles per hour.

The Hercules global cluster is the brightest cluster in the northern sky. It was discovered by English scientist Edmond Halley in 1714.

More than one million Earths would fit inside the Sun.

The word comet comes from the Greek kométes, meaning “wearing long hair.”

The Hubble Space Telescope recently discovered a huge, 295-mile crater on the asteroid Vesta. This is massive when compared to Vesta's 330-mile diameter. If Earth had a crater of proportional size, it would fill most of the Pacific Ocean basin.

Native Americans have unique names for each full moon in a year. In February, the Cherokee name is Month of the Bony Moon; September is Month of the Nut Moon.

The world is not round. It is an oblate spheroid, flattened at the poles, and bulging at the equator.

The huge halo of comets that surrounds our solar system is called the Oort Cloud.

Neil Armstrong's spacesuit during training brought in $178,500 at a recent auction. This was more than double its presale estimate.

The jets of water vapor discharged by a comet have a rocket-like effect. They alter the comet's orbit enough to make its course unpredictable.

Neptune has eight known satellites.

Neptune is a maximum distance of 2.82 billion miles from the Sun. The lengths of one of its days and one year are 17 hours 6 minutes and 165 Earth days, respectively.

There are 7 rings surrounding Saturn. Each of the rings is made up of thousands of ringlets, which are made up of billions of objects of varying sizes from 33 feet wide icebergs to pinhead-small ice specks.

There are 88 different constellations that have been identified and named by astronomers.

The largest crater that can be seen on the Moon is called Bailly, or the "fields of ruin." It covers an area of about 26,000 square miles, about the size of West Virginia, and is over three times the size of Wales.