Space Facts for Kids
Out-of-this-world facts about the universe
On the exoplanet HD 189733b, it rains molten glass sideways in winds that reach 8,700 kilometres per hour.
The Milky Way galaxy is so vast that light takes about 100,000 years to travel from one side to the other.
Saturn is not the only planet with rings. Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune all have ring systems too, though they are much fainter.
The distance between the Earth and the Moon is large enough to fit all the other planets in the solar system side by side.
The last supernova observed in the Milky Way with the naked eye was Kepler's Supernova in 1604.
Neptune has incredibly powerful storms with wind speeds reaching over 2,000 kilometres per hour — the fastest in the solar system.
In about five billion years, the Sun will run out of hydrogen fuel and expand into a red giant before eventually becoming a white dwarf.
Despite being the closest planet to the Sun, Mercury has water ice hiding in permanently shadowed craters at its poles.
The Moon is not a perfect sphere. It is slightly lemon-shaped, bulging at the equator due to the gravitational pull of the Earth.
The cosmic microwave background is the oldest light in the universe, emitted about 380,000 years after the Big Bang and still detectable today.