Astronomy
The Harvest Moon is the full moon that is nearest to the autumnal equinox. Normally, the Harvest Moon occurs in September. Often, the Harvest Moon seems to be bigger or brighter or more colorful than other moons. These effects have to do with the seasonal tilt of the earth.
The warm color of the moon shortly after it rises is an optical illusion, based on the fact that when the moon is low in the sky, you are looking at it through a greater amount of atmospheric particles than when the moon is overhead. The atmosphere scatters the bluish component of moonlight (which is really reflected white light from the sun), but allows the reddish component of the light to travel a straighter path to your eyes.
We can only detect about 5% of the matter in the universe. The rest is made up of invisible matter (called dark matter) and a mysterious form of energy known as dark energy.
The Sun's core releases the equivalent of 100 billion nuclear bombs every second. All that energy works its way out through the various layers of the Sun, taking thousands of years to make the trip. The Sun's energy is emitted as heat and light and it powers the solar system.
Black holes are so dense, and produce such intense gravity, that nothing, not even light, can escape their gravitational clutches. However, there are some unusual situations where a form of radiation, called Hawking radiation, can slip away.
Shooting stars really aren't stars. They are usually just tiny dust particles falling through our atmosphere and they vaporize due to the heat of friction with the atmospheric gases.
Venus is considerably hotter than Mercury, even though it is farther away from the Sun. The thickness of Venus’s atmosphere traps heat near the surface of the planet.
Venus spins very slowly on its axis. A day on Venus is 243 Earth-days long, while Venus's year is only 224.7 days. Even weirder, Venus spins backwards on its axis compared to the other planets in the solar system.
The universe is filled with galaxies and the most distant ones are moving away from us at more than 90 percent of the speed of light.
Saturn is the only planet in the solar system that would float on water.
Saturn's rings are arguably the flattest structure known to man, being some 300,000 km end-to-end but with a vertical thickness of about 10 meters.
The Sun burns 600 million tons of Hydrogen every second.
You would only weigh about 1/6th of your current weight if you stood on the Moon.
Earth is the only planet that has plate tectonics!
The warm color of the moon shortly after it rises is an optical illusion, based on the fact that when the moon is low in the sky, you are looking at it through a greater amount of atmospheric particles than when the moon is overhead. The atmosphere scatters the bluish component of moonlight (which is really reflected white light from the sun), but allows the reddish component of the light to travel a straighter path to your eyes.
We can only detect about 5% of the matter in the universe. The rest is made up of invisible matter (called dark matter) and a mysterious form of energy known as dark energy.
The Sun's core releases the equivalent of 100 billion nuclear bombs every second. All that energy works its way out through the various layers of the Sun, taking thousands of years to make the trip. The Sun's energy is emitted as heat and light and it powers the solar system.
Black holes are so dense, and produce such intense gravity, that nothing, not even light, can escape their gravitational clutches. However, there are some unusual situations where a form of radiation, called Hawking radiation, can slip away.
Shooting stars really aren't stars. They are usually just tiny dust particles falling through our atmosphere and they vaporize due to the heat of friction with the atmospheric gases.
Venus is considerably hotter than Mercury, even though it is farther away from the Sun. The thickness of Venus’s atmosphere traps heat near the surface of the planet.
Venus spins very slowly on its axis. A day on Venus is 243 Earth-days long, while Venus's year is only 224.7 days. Even weirder, Venus spins backwards on its axis compared to the other planets in the solar system.
The universe is filled with galaxies and the most distant ones are moving away from us at more than 90 percent of the speed of light.
Saturn is the only planet in the solar system that would float on water.
Saturn's rings are arguably the flattest structure known to man, being some 300,000 km end-to-end but with a vertical thickness of about 10 meters.
The Sun burns 600 million tons of Hydrogen every second.
You would only weigh about 1/6th of your current weight if you stood on the Moon.
Earth is the only planet that has plate tectonics!
