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24 Astronomy Facts You Never Learned in School

Reader’s Digest Editors

From a bar in the clouds to finding more water from the Moon, outer space is constantly surprising us.

The sun is bigger than you can even imagine

This image from June 20, 2013, at 11:15 p.m. EDT shows the bright light of a solar flare on the left side of the sun and an eruption of solar material shooting through the sun’s atmosphere, called a prominence eruption. Shortly thereafter, this same region of the sun sent a coronal mass ejection out into space. --- On June 20, 2013, at 11:24 p.m., the sun erupted with an Earth-directed coronal mass ejection or CME, a solar phenomenon that can send billions of tons of particles into space that can reach Earth one to three days later. These particles cannot travel through the atmosphere to harm humans on Earth, but they can affect electronic systems in satellites and on the ground. Experimental NASA research models, based on observations from NASA’s Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory and ESA/NASA’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory show that the CME left the sun at speeds of around 1350 miles per second, which is a fast speed for CMEs. Earth-directed CMEs can cause a space weather phenomenon called a geomagnetic storm, which occurs when they funnel energy into Earth's magnetic envelope, the magnetosphere, for an extended period of time. The CME’s magnetic fields peel back the outermost layers of Earth's fields changing their very shape. Magnetic storms can degrade communication signals and cause unexpected electrical surges in power grids. They also can cause aurora. Storms are rare during solar minimum, but as the sun’s activity ramps up every 11 years toward solar maximum – currently expected in late 2013 -- large storms occur several times per year. In the past, geomagnetic storms caused by CMEs of this strength and direction have usually been mild.Courtesy NASA/Goddard/SDO

When you look up at the sky and see the sun beaming down at you, it’s hard to tell how truly big it is. So consider this: About a million duplicates of Earth could comfortably fit inside of it, according to NASA’s C. Alex Young, PhD. And if the sun didn’t supply our main energy, we’d be shivering in the dark; its core releases energy that is the equivalent of 100 billion nuclear bombs. That sure explains these strange ways the sun affects your body.

Hot ice is a thing

A Neptune-size planet with a clear atmosphere is shown crossing in front of its star in this artist depiction. Such crossings, or transits, are observed by telescopes like NASA Hubble and Spitzer to glean information about planets atmospheres.Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech

At 33 light-years away is an exoplanet called Gliese 436 b. The planet is composed of different water elements, which form burning ice. In other words, the ice on the planet remains solid due to pressure, while the extreme surface temperature of 570° F (300° C) super-heats the water, causing it to come off as steam. Whoa…

There’s a bar in the sky

W44 is located around 10,000 light-years away, within a forest of dense star-forming clouds in the constellation of Aquila, the Eagle. This image combines data from ESA Herschel and XXM-Newton space observatories.Courtesy Herschel: Quang Nguyen Luong & F. Motte, HOBYS Key Program consortium, Herschel SPIRE/PACS/ESA consortia. XMM-Newton: ESA/XMM-Newton

It may seem like a bartender’s dream (or nightmare), but way up beyond our atmosphere, there’s a gas cloud made from alcohol about 1,000 times the diameter of our entire solar system. There’s enough alcohol there for about 400 septillion pints of beer (that’s 400 followed by 24 zeros!). To put that into perspective, ScienceAlert notes that’s “enough alcohol to supply 300,000 pints of beer every day to every single person on Earth for the next billion years.” Cheers!

Walking in space might cause you to crave a steak

Expedition 35 Flight Engineers Chris Cassidy (pictured) and Tom Marshburn (out of frame) completed a space walk at 2:14 p.m. EDT May 11 to inspect and replace a pump controller box on the International Space Station?s far port truss (P6) leaking ammonia coolant. The two NASA astronauts began the 5-hour, 30-minute space walk at 8:44 a.m.Courtesy NASA

Astronauts returning from a space walk have noted the aroma of various odors on their space suits ranging from metal to a charcoal-broiled steak. That’s due to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which are by-products of dying stars. PAHs are also released from burning coal, wood, gasoline, and—you guessed it—charcoal-broiled meat. Learn more about what outer space actually smells like.

There’s a lot of trash out there

This artist concept illustrates an asteroid belt around the bright star Vega. Evidence for this warm ring of debris was found using NASA Spitzer Space Telescope, and the European Space Agency Herschel Space Observatory.Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech

There may be a lot of garbage filling up our landfills on Earth, but there are over a million pieces of trash orbiting the earth, too, reports BBC News. Space junk is a real problem and even something as small as a paper clip could wreak havoc on our satellite system—that could mean no Netflix for you, among more serious issues like messing with our National Security system. Currently, there’s no great way to clean up space, but scientists are focusing on solutions.

Raspberries and rum in space

Astronaut Michael E. Lopez-Alegria, Expedition 14 commander and NASA space station science officer, drinks a beverage in the Zvezda Service Module of the International Space Station.Courtesy NASA

OK, you can’t actually go raspberry picking in space—yet. But, as it turns out, the main component that gives raspberries their distinctive flavor, ethyl formate, was discovered in the Milky Way in 2009. Ethyl formate is also a component of rum, but it’s also unlikely you’ll be able to order a rum and coke in the galaxy any time soon—especially since alcohol is one of the foods that are banned from space.

Uranus is quirky

This is an image of the planet Uranus taken by the spacecraft Voyager 2 in 1986.Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech

As the only planet that rotates on its side, Uranus has scientists baffled. Some theories include that the planet may have been altered at some point by a titanic collision, says space.com. Either way, it’s the oddball in planet rotations.

Stargazing is (almost) like looking into the past

This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image, taken in near-infrared light, transforms the pillars into eerie, wispy silhouettes, which are seen against a background of myriad stars. The near-infrared light can penetrate much of the gas and dust, revealing stars behind the nebula as well as hidden away inside the pillars. Some of the gas and dust clouds are so dense that even the near-infrared light cannot penetrate them. New stars embedded in the tops of the pillars, however, are apparent as bright sources that are unseen in the visible image. The ghostly bluish haze around the dense edges of the pillars is material getting heated up by the intense ultraviolet radiation from a cluster of young, massive stars and evaporating away into space. The stellar grouping is above the pillars and cannot be seen in the image. At the top edge of the left-hand pillar, a gaseous fragment has been heated up and is flying away from the structure, underscoring the violent nature of star-forming regions. Astronomers used filters that isolate the light from newly formed stars, which are invisible in the visible-light image. At these wavelengths, astronomers are seeing through the pillars and even through the back wall of the nebula cavity and can see the next generations of stars just as they're starting to emerge from their formative nursery.Courtesy NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team

Since stars are so far away and their light takes so long to reach Earth, it’s possible the star you’re looking at is already dead. A good example is the Pillars of Creation, which are part of a region called the Eagle Nebula that’s 7000 light-years away from us. These pillar-like clouds of dust and gas were first imaged by the Hubble Telescope in 1995—but they were actually destroyed at least 6000 years ago by a supernova. What we’re seeing in Hubble’s 1995 image is what the Pillars of Creation looked like 7000 years ago. The good news: Those “already dead” stars are rare, so the majority of the stars in the sky are “still there and will be for some time,” says astronomer Phil Plait.

Lose weight by planet hopping

This processed color image of Jupiter was produced in 1990 by the U.S. Geological Survey from a Voyager image captured in 1979. Zones of light-colored, ascending clouds alternate with bands of dark, descending clouds. Courtesy NASA/JPL/USGS

If you’re, say, 140 pounds, did you know you would be about 53 pounds on Mercury? Without getting caught up in complicated math, the reason behind the swift weight change is the planet’s gravitational field. As LiveScience explains, “your mass remains constant across the universe, while your weight changes depending on the gravitational forces acting on you, which vary from planet to planet.” Since Mercury’s gravitational field is less than Earth’s, you’d weigh less. If the gravitational field is more than the Earth’s, you’d, of course, weigh more. (Word to the wise: Avoid Jupiter, because it triples your weight!) These are the most baffling mysteries about the universe.

Move over, moon rocks

Rocks: Windows to History of MarsCourtesy NASA/JPL/Cornell

You don’t have to go all the ways to Mars to get a souvenir from space. When meteorites were tested on Earth from the Sahara Desert and Antarctica, it was revealed that some rocks come from Mars.

Originally Published on sitename.com

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