Table of Contents
Fact 1 A compost heap generates as much energy as the Sun! 8
Fact 2 Venus smells like rotten eggs 10
Fact 3 You are made of Stardust 12
Fact 4 Footprints on the Moon will last for millions of years 14
Fact 5 Oceans of liquid diamond may exist on Neptune 16
Fact 6 Astronauts have feet as soft as babies 18
Fact 7 Space is completely silent 20
Fact 8 Hot stars are blue, cold stars are red… our taps are wrong! 22
Fact 9 Some stars spin 700 times per second 24
Fact 10 Venus and Uranus are upside down 26
Fact 11 Saturn is not the only planet with rings 28
Fact 12 Dark sunspots are as bright as the full Moon 30
Fact 13 Metal sticks together in space 32
Fact 14 Astronauts cannot burp in space 34
Fact 15 The days really are getting longer 36
Fact 16 Neptune is home to the fastest winds in the Solar System 38
Fact 17 There is no dark side to the Moon 40
Fact 18 Black holes are not actually holes! 42
Fact 19 Clusters of galaxies are used, as gigantic cosmic telescopes 44
Fact 20 Mercury is the fastest planet 46
Fact 21 On Mars you need flip flops and a hat 48
Fact 22 The moons of Jupiter told us the speed of tight 50
Fact 23 Earth is travelling through space at 225 km per second 52
Fact 24 The light from stars tell astronomers what the Universe is made of 54
Fact 25 Space agencies; use planets to steer spacecraft around the Solar System 56
Fact 26 Shepherd's keep the rings of Saturn in order 58
Fact 27 The Universe is expanding faster now than in the past 60
Fact 28 Zero gravity makes copulation rather tricky 62
Fact 29 The sight of a larger than, usual Moon rising is just an illusion 63
Fact 30 Twinkle twinkle little star! Stars do not twinkle 64
Fact 31 Europa, a moon of Jupiter, could harbour alien life 66
Fact 32 Pluto is no longer a planet 68
Fact 33 The first's pace walk nearly ended in tragedy 70
Fact 34 The Andromeda galaxy is on a collision course with the Milky Way 72
Fact 35 A Martian volcano is almost three times the size of Mount Everest 74
Fact 36 The telescope was invented by an optician 76
Fact 37 Astronomers use black and white cameras to take colour pictures 77
Fact 38 There are thousands of planets beyond our Solar System 78
Fact 39 There is a hurricane on Jupiter nearly three-times the size-of Earth 80
Fact 40 If you fell into a black hole you would be stretched Like spaghetti 82
Fact 41 There are clouds of water floating in space 84
Fact 42 It is very likely that the Sun will one day swallow up the Earth 86
Fact 43 Shooting stars are not stars at all 88
Fact 44 Inhabitants of Saturn could enjoy the northern lights too 90
Fact 45 Comets have two tails 92
Fact 46 The Moon was once part of Earth 93
Fact 47 To find black holes, astronomers look for the brightest objects in the night sky 94
Fact 48 There are three laws which govern the motion of the planets 95
Fact 49 The most common star is a red dwarf 96
Fact 50 The Kessler effect suggests one day we may get cut off from space! 98
Fact 51 The first telescope mirrors used arsenic 100
Fact 52 A gas cloud contains enough alcohol for everyone for a billion years 102
Fact 53 Our eyes are rubbish colour detectors in the dark 104
Fact 54 Light takes around one million years to reach us from the core of the Sun 105
Fact 55 A hurricane force wind is just a breeze on Mars 106
Fact 56 An astronaut in space would last about 15 seconds without a spacesuit 108
Fact 57 Travel fast to stay young 110
Fact 58 The sky has co-ordinates just like latitude and longitude 111
Fact 59 The Grand Canyon is dwarfed by the largest valley in the Solar System 112
Fact 60 Earth is closer to the Sun in winter 114
Fact 61 There is water on the Moon 116
Fact 62 Dark matter exists but we do not know what it is 118
Fact 63 Studying the light from galaxies tells us how fast they are moving 120
Fact 64 The largest single mirror telescope has a mirror 8.2m across 122
Fact 65 Pigeon droppings were once mistakenly identified to explain the radiation from the Big Bang 123
Fact 66 Saturn's moon Minnas looks like the Death Star from Star Wars 124
Fact 67 Neptune was first discovered by mathematics 126
Fact 68 Meteorites are not hot! 127
Fact 69 The Sun looks white in space 128
Fact 70 Voyager I will reach its destination in 40,000 years 130
Fact 71 We are sending signals into outer space and aliens could be listening 132
Fact 72 Mercury is shrinking! 134
Fact 73 The Hubble Space Telescope was launched with the wrong mirror 136
Fact 74 A veritable menagerie of animals have been sent into space 138
Fact 75 The movement of the Earth, allows astronomers to measure, distances in space 139
Fact 76 Stars do not live forever 140
Fact 77 The different shapes of galaxies relate to their evolutionary stage 142
Fact 78 The rotation of the Sun is not uniform 144
Fact 79 Some variable stars can tell us how far away they are 146
Fact 80 Spacecraft docking in space is a tricky manoeuvre 148
Fact 81 The Universe is 92 billion light years across 150
Fact 82 In 1977 astronomers thought they had detected an alien radio signal 151
Fact 83 Gamma ray bursts are among the most powerful explosions in the Universe 152
Fact 84 The constellations of today will not be recognisable in a hundred thousand years 154
Fact 85 VY Cams Majoris is the largest, known star in the Universe 156
Fact 86 Jupiter is a failed star 158
Fact 87 Dung beetles use the Milky Way to navigate 160
Fact 88 Jupiter is the Solar System's vacuum cleaner 162
Fact 89 Polaris is the north pole star but in 12,000 years it will be replaced by Vega 164
Fact 90 The night sky in a globular cluster would be glittering with thousands of bright stars 166
Fact 91 Eratosthenes measured the circumference of Earth in 240bc 167
Fact 92 A star called Lucy is a large cosmic diamond 168
Fact 93 Lunar eclipses cause massive temperature drops on the Moon 169
Fact 94 A teaspoon of neutron star material weighs 10 million tonnes 170
Fact 95 The Pistol Star is 10 million times brighter than the Sun 172
Fact 96 The atmosphere of the Sun is hotter than its visible surface 174
Fact 97 Some rocket engines produce enough thrust to lift a sheet of A4 paper! 176
Fact 98 The Sun is a very faint star! 178
Fact 99 Astronomers have their very own tape measures 179
Fact 100 A Martian meteorite has the fossilised building blocks of life inside it 180
Fact 101 There are alien lakes on Saturn's moon Titan 182
