The Scale of the Universe

Facts:

The Kármán Line is roughly the altitude where the air becomes too thin for traditional aircraft to fly

It is considered by many to be the boundary between Earth and Space

Facts:

The first man-made satellite was Sputnik 1, launched by the USSR in 1957

As of January 2024, there are 9185 man-made satellites in orbit around the Earth

The vast majority of these are in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) with an altitude of under 2000km

Some satellites in High Earth Orbit (HEO) can sit at altitudes higher than 35,000km!

Facts:

The ISS contains about as much living space as a 6-bedroom house, and weighs 420,000kg

The ISS was assembled in pieces across 42 seperate rocket launches

The ISS completes 16 full orbits of the Earth each day, or one full orbit every 90 minutes

The ISS has been continuiously occupied since November 2000

Facts:

The Moon is believed to have formed when a planet the size of Mars collided with the Earth billions of years ago

It is the 5th largest moon in the solar system

It is the only celestial body, other than Earth, that humans have landed on

The Moon is slowly drifting away from the Earth, at a rate of about one inch a year

Facts:

The farthest distance any human has been from the Earth was set by the crew of Apollo 13 in April 1970

They achieved this distance while in orbit around the far side of the Moon!

Facts:

The James Webb Space Telescope is an orbiting infrared observatory launched in December 2021

It orbits at the Lagrange 2 point, a point in space where the gravity of the Earth and Sun allow for a stable orbit

The telescope orbits so far from Earth so it can take images of Deep Space without interference from the Earth or the Moon!

Facts:

Venus is the hottest planet in the solar system

It is the second largest of the rocky planets, only narrowly smaller than Earth

It is much hotter than Mercury, despite being further away, thanks to its dense atmosphere

Venus is the brightest object in the night sky after the Moon

Facts:

Mars is the second smallest planet in the Solar System after Mercury

It is the outermost of the four rocky planets, orbiting between Earth and the asteroid belt

Mars is often called the "Red Planet" due to a layer of rust coating the surface

Facts:

Mercury is the smallest planet in the solar system

It is also the fastest planet, orbiting around the Sun in just 88 Earth days

Due to its close orbit to the Sun, Mercury is technically the closest planet, on average, to every planet in the Solar System including Earth

Facts:

The Sun accounts for 99.8% of the mass of the entire solar system

It is a Type G "Yellow Dwarf" star. Although, despite the name, it is roughly of average size

The Sun will eventually expand into a red giant, which will engulf the inner solar system, before collapsing back down into a white dwarf star

Facts:

The Earth travels nearly 1 billion kilometers every year in orbit around the Sun

If the Earth were to fall out of orbit, directly away from the Sun at the same speed, it would take roughly one year to reach the orbit of Jupiter

And around 5 years to reach the orbit of Pluto!

Facts:

Jupiter is the largest and most massive planet in our Solar System

The Great Red Spot is the largest storm on Jupiter at over twice the width of the Earth

Jupiter's magnetosphere extends outwards behind Jupiter for over 1 billion kilometers! Far enough to reach Saturn

Facts:

Titan is the second largest moon in the Solar System, and largest moon of Saturn

It is the most distant object we have successfully landed a spacecraft on. It was visited by the Huygens spaceprobe in January 2005

Titan is the only moon in the Solar System with a dense atmosphere, and the only place other than Earth known to have a hydrologic cycle

Temperature on Titan sees very little variation, with the temperature at the poles being only a few degrees colder than at the equator

Facts:

Saturn is the 2nd largest planet in the Solar System

It is also the least dense planet in the Solar System, with an average density lower than water

Saturn is home to the largest set of rings in the Solar System, as well as more than 100 moons

Facts:

Uranus is the 3rd largest planet in the solar system, and the largest of the two ice giants

Despite being larger in diameter than Neptune, it is actually less massive

Uranus sits at a permanent 97.7 degree tilt. As a result, the planet rotates almost north to south, and the north pole permanently faces the Sun

This is believed to be the result of a collision with an Earth-sized planet billions of years ago

Facts:

Neptune is the 4th largest planet in the solar system, and smallest of the two ice giants

It is the farthest planet from the Sun in our Solar System

Neptune has the strongest winds of any planet in our Solar System. Reaching up to 2000km/h

It is the densest of the Solar Systems four giant planets

Facts:

Pluto is the largest dwarf planet in the solar system

It was discovered in 1930, and was, for a long time, considered the solar system's 9th planet, until it was reclassified in 2006

One of Pluto's moons, Charon, is half the size of the planet itself!

Facts:

The Heliopause marks the edge of the Heliosphere, a giant bubble containing solar wind from the Sun

Once solar wind reaches the Heliopause it is pushed back by the interstellar wind of other stars

Facts:

Voyager 1 is a spacecraft launched in 1977 to explore the outer Solar System

It is the most distant man-made object ever launched into space

It is also the second longest in-use spacecraft in history, having been in active use for over 46 years.

It is surpassed only by its sister ship, Voyager 2, which launched two weeks earlier

Facts:

A light year is the distance light can travel in one year

This is considered to be the upper speed limit of the universe, and therefore no information can travel farther than this distance in one year

Facts:

The farthest reach of our Suns influence is the outer edge of the Oort Cloud

That's 100, 000 times farther away from the Sun than the Earth is!

Even at its current speed of 1.6 million kilometres a day, Voyager 1 isn't expected to make it out of our Solar System for another 30,000 years!

Facts:

Proxima Centauri is the closest star to Earth after the Sun

It is a Red Dwarf star in the Alpha Centauri star system, where it orbits with two other stars

Proxima Centauri is believed to have an Earth-sized planet in orbit around it, Proxima b, which was discovered in 2016

Facts:

Betelgeuse is a Red Supergiant star in the constellation Orion

It is one of the brightest stars in the night sky, and glows orange-red

Betelgeuse is only 10 million years old, around 0.2% the age of the Sun

Despite this, it is in the process of dying, and will likely explode into a supernova within the next 100,000 years

Facts:

Gaia BH1 is a binary system containing the nearest known Black Hole to our Solar System

The black hole is around the mass of the Sun, and coexists with another star in the constellation Ophiuchus

The two orbit each other around once every 185 days

The black hole was discovered in 2022, along with the second nearest black hole, Gaia BH2, which resides around 3,800 light years from Earth

Facts:

The Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy is the closest galaxy to the Milky Way

Desipte its close proximity, it wasn't discovered until 2003, as it is obscured by dust clouds in the Milky Way

The galaxy is being slowly ripped apart by the Milky Way, leaving a trail like a comet over 200,000 light years long as it orbits!

Facts:

Sagittarius A is a supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way

It contains around 4 million times the mass of our Sun!

Facts:

The Andromeda galaxy is the closest large galaxy to the Milky Way

It is much larger that the Milky Way, containing over 1 trillion stars

In 4.5 billion years the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies will collide, creating an even larger galaxy

Andromeda is approaching the Milky Way at approximately 100 kilometers per second

Facts:

JADES-GS-z13-0 is an ancient galaxy discovered in September 2022

It is the oldest and most distant galaxy ever discovered.

The light that we see from this galaxy today was emitted from stars 13.4 billion years ago!

Facts:

The observable universe is a sphere containing everything that can be observed from Earth

Anything beyond this sphere cannot be detected, as no information has had enough time to travel to Earth since the formation of the universe

The observable universe contains hundreds of billions of galaxies and up to 1 septillion stars

The observable universe is not a structure, but a region of observation from a specific point in space. Therefore every point in space has its own observable universe