The Size of the Universe

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:

Deimos is the smallest of the two Martian moons

It orbits the planet every 30 hours

The composition of Deimos is similar to that of asteroids in the outer asteroid belt

Facts:

Despite their size they can have as much as twice the mass of the Sun!

They are the densest objects in the universe, after black holes

Neutrons stars spin very fast. The fastest neutron stars can spin tens of thousands of times a minute

Facts:

Vesta was discovered in Bremen, Germany in 1807 by Heinrich Wilhelm Olbers

Vesta is the largest asteroid in the asteroid field, and second largest object, after Ceres

It is one of the brightest objects in the sky, sometimes even visible to the naked eye

Vesta is one of the oldest objects in the solar system, only 1-2 million years younger than the Sun!

Facts:

Ceres is a dwarf planet in the asteroid belt, between Mars and Jupiter

Ceres is the largest object in the asteroid belt, comprising nearly a quarter of the asteroid belt's entire mass!

It was considered the largest asteroid in the solar system until it was reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006

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 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:

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 other planet in the Solar System

Facts:

Ganymede is the largest moon in the Solar System. It is larger than both Mercury and Pluto

It orbits Jupiter as one of the four Galilean moons, named after their discoverer, Galileo Galilei

It is the only moon known to have its own magnetic field

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:

White Dwarf stars are the remnants of stars that have exhausted all of their fuel

Approximately 97% of stars in the Milky Way will eventually become White Dwarf stars

White Dwarfs are the third densest objects in the universe, after black holes and neutron stars

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:

Earth is the largest of the rocky planets, and 5th largest planet in our Solar System

It is the densest planet in the solar system.

It is one of only two bodies in the solar system with a hydrologic cycle

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:

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:

Red Dwarf stars can survive for up to 10 trillion of years

The closest star to our solar system, Proxima Centauri, is a red dwarf star

Red Dwarf stars are the most common star type in the Milky Way, comprising about 70% of all stars

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:

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:

It is the largest planet ever found, at over 6.5x the diameter of Jupiter

GQ Lupi B was discovered in 2005, and listed as a "confirmed planet" in 2020

It is so large that some believe it to be a brown dwarf star

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:

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:

UY Scuti is the largest star ever discovered

By volume it is almost 5 billion times the size of our Sun

if the Sun was replaced by UY Scuti, its outer edge would reach all the way to Jupiter!

Facts:

Phoenix A is the largest black hole ever discovered

if the Sun was replaced by Phoenix A its outer edge would reach 100 times farther than the distance to Pluto

It is 24,100 times more massive than Sagittarius A, the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way

It is more than twice as massive as the entire Triangulum Galaxy, one of the closest galaxies to the Milky Way

Facts:

The Oort Cloud is a giant shell of icy debris surrounding the outer edge of the Solar System

It exists at the farthest point of the Sun's influence, and may reach as much as halfway the distance to the nearest star, Proxima Centauri

The Oort cloud may contain upwards of 1 trillion objects larger than 1km

Halley's Comet is believed to have originated in the Oort Cloud

Facts:

The Eagle Nebula resides in the constellation Serpens and is best known for containing the Pillars of Creation

It was discovered in 1745 by Swiss astronomer Jean-Philippe Loyus de Chéseaux

A study from 2007 proposed that the Eagle Nebula may have been destroyed by a supernova 6,000 years ago, but the light hasn't reached us yet

Facts:

The Milky Way is our home galaxy

It is estimated to be around 13.6 billion years old, having formed just 100 million years after the Big Bang

The Milky Way is home to over 200 billion stars

The Milky Way rotates like a planet. It is so large that a single full rotation takes 250 Million Years

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:

ESO 383-G 076 is one of the largest galaxies in the universe

Unlike the Milky Way and Andromeda, which are spiral galaxies, ESO 383-G 076 is elliptical (oval shaped)

As a result, the galaxies major axis is more than twice the length of its minor axis

Facts:

The Laniakea Supercluster is a collection of over 100,000 galaxies, including the Milky Way

Galaxies within the Laniakea Supercluster are gravitationally drawn to a point in space known as The Great Attractor

Given enough time, the Laniakea Supercluster will be torn apart by dark matter

Facts:

The Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall is a galactic filament, or collection of galactic superclusters

It is the largest known structure in the observable universe

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