Out of This World

I love astronomy. I am absolutely fascinated by the size and complexity of the universe. So yesterday, when NASA released the latest picture of the Crab Nebula from the Hubble Telescope, I spent most of the afternoon perusing some of my favorite space sites. While doing so, I started keeping a little mental journal of facts I think are amazing and decided to write them down and share them. Aren't you lucky! I'm going to do it like a Harpers Index, just because I like the format. Enjoy!

Number of stars in the Milky Way galaxy: 200 billion
Estimated number of galaxies in the universe: 125 billion
Temperature in deep space (absolute zero): -273 C (-493 F)
Number of Earths that would fit inside Jupiter: 1,000

Number of Jupiters that would fit inside the Sun: 1,000

Number of times brighter some stars are than the Sun: 600,000

The speed of light: 186,287.5 miles per second
Distance light travels in a year: 6 trillion miles

Distance to nearest galaxy (Andromeda): 2 million light years
Distance from Earth to Sun: 93 million miles

Minutes it takes light from the Sun to travel to Earth: 8
Radius of the universe: 10 billion light years

Time it would take to travel across the Milky Way at light speed: 100,000 years
Farthest distance a man-made object has traveled in space: 6.4 billion miles

Number of confirmed black holes: 14

Number of hours it took me to compile this list from internet sources: 3.5

How much I enjoyed doing it on a scale of 1 to 10: 10