Alan Stutts writes Astronomy is a fun science filled with many astronomy fun facts.  Everything from the size and temperature of our own star, the Sun, to the makeup of distant planets is recorded.  People can get a lot of enjoyment from all of this data.

There are many astronomy fun facts about this sun.  Measurements show it between 91 and 94.5 million miles from Earth.   It isn’t that scientists don’t know.  Our orbit is elliptical. The distance varies depending on where the Earth lies in that orbit.

The sun is only average size for a star, yet it’s size is another terrific source of astronomy fun facts.  It’s contains 98% of all the stuff in the solar system, even though it’s not large for a star.  Even with Jupiter on our side, we’re still a measly 2% of non “the sun” stuff.  About 100 Earths side to side would stretch across the face of the sun.  The sun blows its solar wind out to 50 times the distance between the star and our earth.

Alan Stutts says we shall turn to some astronomy fun facts that don’t have to do with the sun?  Isn’t the moon interesting?  It’s the only other space object, besides the earth, over which man has walked.  One earthly traveler visited the moon and never came back.  Dr. Eugene Shoemaker didn’t make the cut for astronauts.  After his death he was cremated and his ashes scattered over the moon by the Lunar Prospector spacecraft in 1999.

There are even more astronomy fun facts covering the moon.  In a famous nursery rhyme a cow jumped over the moon.  Many people, in fact about 13% of those asked in 1988, still believe the moon is made of cheese.  And finally the suits worn by the moon walking astronauts weighed 180 pounds on Earth but only 30 pounds on the moon.  Talk about an instant diet.

Far away objects have astronomy fun facts too.  Stars bring the past to life.  Some of the stars we see today in the night sky are so far away that light takes a million years to reach us from them.  It could be that some of those stars blinked out long ago.  The number of stars in the sky is expressed by a one with 22 zeros following it.  That is huge.

Alan Stutts Astronomy fun facts could fill volumes and volumes.  But this article can’t.  Get out there and learn more.

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