Space Facts for Kids
Out-of-this-world facts about the universe
Earth's ozone layer, about 15–35 kilometres above the surface, absorbs most of the Sun's harmful ultraviolet radiation. Without it, plants, animals, and humans would face severe radiation damage.
The Sun contains 99.86% of all the mass in our entire solar system. Everything else — all the planets, moons, asteroids, and comets — makes up just the remaining tiny fraction.
Saturn's famous rings are made mostly of chunks of ice and rock, ranging in size from tiny grains to pieces as big as a house. The rings are incredibly thin — only about 30 feet thick in some places — even though they stretch for hundreds of thousands of miles.
A day on Venus is longer than a year on Venus! Venus rotates so slowly that it takes 243 Earth days to spin once, but only 225 Earth days to orbit the Sun. Venus also spins backwards compared to most planets.
Neutron stars are so incredibly dense that a single teaspoon of their material would weigh about a billion tons on Earth. These stars are the collapsed cores of massive stars that exploded as supernovas.
Pluto has a giant heart-shaped region on its surface called Tombaugh Regio, named after the astronomer who discovered Pluto. This heart is filled with frozen nitrogen and carbon monoxide ice.
Our Milky Way galaxy contains an estimated 200 to 400 billion stars. Even at the speed of light, it would take about 100,000 years to travel from one side of the Milky Way to the other.
Mercury has the most extreme temperature swings of any planet in our solar system. Without an atmosphere to hold heat, daytime temperatures can reach 800°F (430°C), while nights plunge to -290°F (-180°C).
Black holes don't just have incredible gravity — they also warp time itself. A clock sitting near a black hole would tick slower than a clock far away from it. This effect, predicted by Einstein, has been confirmed by scientists.
Jupiter's moon Europa is covered in a thick shell of ice, but beneath it lies a vast ocean of liquid water — and it contains more water than all of Earth's oceans combined. Scientists think Europa could potentially support life.