5. The density of a neutron star is the same as compressing a Boeing 747 airplane into a small grain of sand.
6. The closest star to us is the sun, located 150 million km away. The next closest star, Proxima Centauri, is 4.24 light years away, or 70,000 years away in our fastest spacecraft.
7. A shooting star is not a star. It is rock, ice, and dust moving so fast that it heats up when it reaches the Earth’s atmosphere. Astronomers call shooting stars, meteors.
8. Sirius, the brightest star in the sky is 20 times brighter than the sun.
9. Looking out into space is like looking back in time. We orbit the Sun at a distance of about 150 million km. Light moves at 300,000 km/sec. So dividing these, it would take 500 seconds (or 8 minutes and 20 seconds) for the light of the sun to reach us here on earth. Therefore, every time we look up at the Sun, we are seeing it as it appeared 8.5 minutes ago. Our view of Alpha Centauri is 4.3 years old, while the appearance of Sirius is more than 8 years old!
10. Some stars are unbelievably huge. One absurdly large one is called VY Canis Majoris - 1420 times larger than the Sun
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