10 Mind-Blowing Facts About The Solar System
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| Voyager 1 Is Entering Heliopause |
The Solar System Is Really Big In 1977, NASA launched the Voyager mission. The first spacecraft, Voyager 1, became the first man-made object to enter interstellar space. It was 2012. It was amazing. But how long was the journey? Voyager 1 had to first pass the planets and then the so-called heliopause. It is the peculiar name given to the range beyond which most of the Sun's emitted particles and magnetic fields spread. To reach the heliopause, Voyager had to travel 121 astronomical units, or 11.18 billion miles. This vast distance is nothing compared to the overall size of the solar system. In fact, if we define it as the Sun and everything that initially orbits the Sun, Voyager 1 will remain within the confines of the Solar System. You, your children and your grandchildren will die long.
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| Uranus Planet |
Uranus Spins Sideways and you already know Uranus is basically a pretty ball. We've always been taught this in class, but this gas giant is hiding a secret: It's actually a strange planet. Scientists don't know the exact reason for this strange behavior, but a possible explanation for the planet's unusual orientation - which is about 90 degrees sideways compared to other planets - is that it underwent a titanic collision in the ancient past. Imagine a massive object impacting Uranus and changing its tilt forever. And because of this extreme tilt, Uranus has what NASA considers the most extreme seasons in the Solar System. First, one Uranus year is equivalent to 84 Earth years. And for a quarter of this time, the sun shines directly on the north or south pole. Suppose you were living at the North Pole of this blue and strange planet. For more than 20 Earth years, you will never see the Sun! Only your friend at the other pole will be able to see our star. When this happens, one hemisphere is always cooler than the other.
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| Moon |
Moon has no atmosphere Earth has an atmosphere that protects us from all kinds of bad radiation, but not all objects in the solar system are this lucky. For example, our majestic moon has no atmosphere. No wind can blow over the surface of our beautiful satellite. This has very interesting consequences. Imagine a second living being on the moon, and you place a light ball on its surface. There will be nothing but you or the impact of asteroids and meteorites to move the ball from its position. This makes the moon a kind of time capsule. Objects that land on it can sit there intact for millions of years. For example, when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon, during the Apollo 11 mission, they left footprints on the surface. These signatures will just sit there unless an impact destroys them. Asteroids essentially act as rubber and they erase precious traces of past events that occurred on the moon's surface.
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| The Sun of Our Solar System |
The Sun holds 99.8% of all the mass in the Solar System Compared to Earth, the Sun is HUGE! The radius of the Earth is 6371 km long, while the radius of the Sun is about 0.7 million km. But that's not the only difference. The mass of our glorious star is about 333,000 times that of Earth. The Sun is so big that more than a million Earth spheres can fit inside it. It's big, isn't it? But if you think about it, the sun is actually an average star in the universe. There are stars much bigger and heavier than the Sun. For example, in terms of sheer physical size, the star UY Scuti is considered one of the largest known. It is only 30 times the mass of the Sun but has a radius greater than 1,700 times that of the Sun.
5) There are probably over 200 moons in the solar system. Yes, you got it right! 200 is the number of moons in the solar system, and may actually be more! Scientists are always discovering more moons in the solar system and debating whether Saturn or Jupiter has more moons. Moons – also known as natural satellites – are planets and asteroids orbiting our solar system. Except for Mercury and Venus, most of the major planets have moons. Pluto and some other dwarf planets as well as many asteroids have small moons. The study of moons in our solar system has become really important to understanding the origin of life as we know it. Well, guess what? Scientists think that both the moons of Saturn and Jupiter have a lot of water.
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.png "The Kuiper Belt(Ultima Thule)") |
| The Kuiper Belt(Ultima Thule) |
There's a Snowman in the Outer Solar System Scientists recently discovered a tiny object orbiting the Sun in a region of space called the Kuiper Belt, and it's shaped like a snowman: it's called Ultima Thule. You can find the Kuiper Belt beyond Neptune's orbit, and since our snowman is in that region, we refer to it as a "trans-Neptunian object." Kuiper Belt objects are mostly composed of ice, and Ultima Thule is no exception.
Its orbit is 298 Earth-years long, and it is so far away that it is able to receive only a tiny fraction of sunlight. Planetary scientists think this object could be the key to understanding the formation of planets in our solar system. Distant orbits preserve this type of material at very cold temperatures, and it also stores scientific information about what conditions were like when the Sun and planets were forming about 4.5 billion years ago.
But how do we know the size and shape of such small objects? We launched New Horizons Mission. The spacecraft had to fly by this particular object in the Kuiper Belt, but to do so, scientists programmed ground-based observations of the tiny Earth as it engulfed a more distant set of stars during its orbit. These observations gave New Horizons a better idea of Ultima Thule's size and shape.
Later, on January 1, 2019, data from the New Horizons flyby began returning to Earth and continued until late 2020. Based on data and images taken by Ultima Thule, planetary scientists realized that it was the first studied contact binary object in the Kuiper Belt. It is 31 kilometers long and has two lobes joined to form a collar around a portion of the object. The lobes for the minor and major elements are named Ultima and Thule, respectively. These two pieces give Ultima Thule the shape of a snowman.
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| The goblin |
Pluto isn't the only dwarf planet in our solar system, you might have heard the term 'dwarf planet' for the first time in 2006 when Pluto dropped into one. Well, we have Ceres, Makemake, Haumea and Eris. These were the only five we knew of until very recently. Recently though, a new dwarf planet has been discovered, officially called 2015 TG387 but nicknamed 'The Goblin'. Estimating the size of the goblin depends on the albedo, which is essentially the reflectance of an object. If it is a dark object, it must be larger; A higher albedo would dictate that it would be smaller. The faint object has an apparent magnitude of 24.64, comparable to the apparent magnitude of Pluto's small moon: it's really faint! It was initially estimated to be 190 miles in diameter, although more precise observations suggested a smaller diameter of 140 miles with a high albedo of 0.21.
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| Jupiter's Great Red Spot |
Jupiter's Great Red Spot is Shrinking We all knew that Jupiter is the largest planet in the Solar System, but did you know that it also hosts the largest storm in the Solar System? This storm is known as the Great Red Spot and has been observed by astronomers with telescopes since the 1600s. Recent studies by modern instruments such as NASA's Juno probe have shown how the storm is hundreds of miles long. What's really new is that this spot is getting smaller now. The storm has been raging for centuries, and perhaps now it is about to end. The contraction is currently being observed in professional telescopes and by amateurs. We'll just have to wait and see!
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| Olympus Mons |
Olympus Mons is the tallest mountain in the solar system The tallest mountain on Earth is Mount Everest, 29,031.69 feet high. But what if I told you that it's nothing compared to the tallest mountain in the solar system? If you go to Mars, you will see this huge volcano, called Olympus Mons. It is the largest volcano on Mars, but it is also the tallest mountain in the Solar System. It is 15.5 miles long! Measuring 374 miles in diameter, it covers the same amount of land as the state of Arizona. Olympus Mons is located near three other volcanoes known as Tharsis Montes. The volcanoes in this area are 10 to 100 times larger than the largest volcanoes on earth: they are huge!
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| The Perseus arm and the Scutum-Centaurus arm |
The Sun is located about 8 kiloparsecs from the galactic center. The Solar System (and Earth) is about 25,000 light-years, or 8 kiloparsecs, from the galactic center, so basically, if you were to think of the Milky Way as a big record, we'd be about halfway between the center. and edges. But how can this volcano be so big? Well, that's because, unlike Earth, Mars doesn't have any plate tectonics that can pull a volcano away from its hotspot – they just sit on a volcanic active site and grow bigger and bigger. Astronomers think the Milky Way is a spiral galaxy with two main spiral arms, called the Perseus arm and the Scutum-Centaurus arm. There are also several small weapons and spurs. However, the Solar System lies in a region between the two arms called the Orion-Cygnus arm. This arm spans 3,500 light years and is 10,000 light years in length! It takes the Sun 250 million years to complete one rotation around the Milky Way - this is known as a "galactic year" or "cosmic year". If you think about it, the last time the solar system was in this position in the Milky Way, there were still dinosaurs on Earth. It's really mind blowing, don't you think?
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