Space Facts for Kids
Out-of-this-world facts about the universe
Magnetars are neutron stars with magnetic fields roughly a quadrillion times stronger than Earth's. A magnetar halfway to the Moon could wipe every credit card on Earth.
At the centre of our Milky Way galaxy lies a supermassive black hole called Sagittarius A*, which has the mass of about four million Suns.
Pluto and its largest moon Charon are tidally locked, meaning the same side of each always faces the other — like two dancers spinning while gazing at each other.
The Boomerang Nebula is the coldest known natural place in the universe, with a temperature of minus 272 degrees Celsius — just one degree above absolute zero.
Our entire solar system orbits the centre of the Milky Way at about 828,000 kilometres per hour. It takes roughly 230 million years to complete one orbit.
Astronauts on the International Space Station see 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets every single day because the station orbits Earth once every 90 minutes.
Saturn is so large that you could fit roughly 764 Earths inside it, yet its density is low enough that it would float on water if you had a big enough ocean.
The cosmic microwave background radiation is the oldest light in the universe, emitted roughly 380,000 years after the Big Bang. You can detect a faint hiss of it on an untuned television.
Jupiter's moon Ganymede is larger than the planet Mercury, making it the biggest moon in the entire solar system.
The Apollo 11 guidance computer had less processing power than a modern pocket calculator, yet it successfully navigated astronauts to the Moon and back.