Antares is the 15th brightest star in the sky, It is more than 1000 light years away.




The universe is so vast it is not comprehensible by the human mind. It would be like an ant trying to understand the wonder of the internet. It can't be done.




The universe humbles us as it should.


Some more interesting facts :-

Jupiter is the fastest rotating planet, which can complete one revolution in less than ten hours.

Jupiter's Great Red Spot is 25,000 miles wide.

Neptune was the first planet in our solar system to be discovered by mathematics.

One Neptune year lasts 165 Earth years.

If you were standing on Mercury, the Sun would appear 2.5 times larger than it appears from Earth.

Uranus winter and summer seasons last the equivalent of 21 Earth years.

Venus is the only planet that rotates clockwise.

Jupiter has such vast winds that it sucks up the meteorites which head towards earth. And also other (lol i forgot the word)

Astronauts get taller when they are in space. (dwarfs shud be sent there :P)

A galactic year is about 266 million Earth-years. This is the time it takes for our solar system to make one revolution around the Milky Way Galaxy.

Hydrogen is the most common atom in the universe.

The Moon was created when a rock the size of Mars slammed into Earth, shortly after the solar system began forming about 4.5 billion years ago, according to the leading theory. (You can get more info on this and its theory just use google)

The Moon is moving away from us. Each year, the Moon steals some of Earth's rotational energy, and uses it to propel itself about 3.8 centimeters higher in its orbit. Researchers say that when it formed, the Moon was about 14,000 miles (22,530 kilometers) from Earth. It's now more than 280,000 miles, or 450,000 kilometers away. (BYE BYE MOON SIGH)

<b>Tides on Earth are caused mostly by the Moon (the Sun has a smaller effect). Here's how it works:<b>

The Moon's gravity pulls on Earth's oceans. High tide aligns with the Moon as Earth spins underneath. Another high tide occurs on the opposite side of the planet because gravity pulls Earth toward the Moon more than it pulls the water.

At full Moon and new Moon, the Sun, Earth and Moon are lined up, producing the higher than normal tides (called spring tides, for the way they spring up). When the Moon is at first or last quarter, smaller neap tides form. The Moon's 29.5-day orbit around Earth is not quite circular. When the Moon is closest to Earth (called its perigee), spring tides are even higher, and they're called perigean spring tides.

All this tugging has another interesting effect: Some of Earth's rotational energy is stolen by the Moon, causing our planet to slow down by about 1.5 milliseconds every century.

The Moon is not round (or spherical). Instead, it's shaped like an egg. If you go outside and look up, one of the small ends is pointing right at you. And the Moon's center of mass is not at the geometric center of the satellite; it's about 1.2 miles (2 kilometers) off-center.

The oldest terrains on Venus seem to be about 800 million years old.

The greenhouse effect is much stronger on Venus than Earth because of Venus' dense carbon dioxide atmosphere (This reminds me if it has more dence carbon dioxide how come it evolved so differently from Earth?)

The Sun's magnetic field is very strong (by terrestrial standards) and very complicated. Its magnetosphere (also known as the heliosphere) extends well beyond Pluto.

Temperature variations on Mercury are the most extreme in the solar system ranging from 90 K to 700 K. The temperature on Venus is slightly hotter but stable


M ars is the fourth planet from the Sun and is known as the red planet. Its red color inspired the Greeks and Romans to name it after their god of war, Ares or Mars. During certain parts of the year it is the third-brightest object in the night sky, surpassed only by the Moon and Venus.

M ars orbits the Sun at a distance about 1.5 times as far as the Earth does. The orbit is somewhat elliptical, so the planet's distance from the Sun varies from a minimum, at perihelion, of 206.7 million km (128.4 million miles) to a maximum, at aphelion, of 249.2 million km (154.8 million miles). Because Mars is farther from the Sun than Earth is, it takes longer to complete a revolution. Its year is 687 Earth days long.

T he Martian day is 24 hours, 37 minutes, and 23 seconds long. The tilt of Mars results in seasonal changes similar to those on Earth. Because of the elliptical orbit of Mars, summer in its southern hemisphere occurs when the planet is nearest the Sun, as does winter in its northern hemisphere.

M ars in half the size of Earth but almost twice the size of the Moon. Mars is also slightly less dense than Earth. In addition, no magnetic field for Mars has been detected, which indicates that the core of Mars is solid. This also explains why Mars has no radiation belt. The total mass of the planet is only one-tenth that of Earth, and thus Martian gravity is only 38% as strong.

M ars is orbited by two irregularly shaped satellites. The larger is named Phobos and the smaller Deimos. Each is only a few kilometers wide. The moons are heavily cratered which suggests that they may be asteroids that were captured by Martian gravity, or possible remnants of the planet itself.


Three Largest Stars Discovered

Tue, 11 Jan 2005 - Astronomers have found three red supergiant stars which are huge; bigger than anything previously discovered. The three stars are called KW Sagitarii (9,800 light-years away), V354 Cephei (9,000 light-years away), and KY Cygni (5,200 light-years away). All three are 1,500 times bigger than our own Sun, and would reach out midway between Jupiter and Saturn if they were in our Solar System. These stars aren't extremely massive, though, they're only 25 times the mass of the Sun (stars have been discovered which have 150 times the mass of the Sun).


Astronomers are announcing today the identification of three red supergiants that have the largest diameters of any normal stars known, more than a billion miles across. The report is being presented by Ms. Emily Levesque, an undergraduate junior at MIT, who has been working with an international team of astronomers, including Philip Massey (Lowell Observatory, in Flagstaff, Arizona), Knut Olsen (Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, in Chile), Bertrand Plez and Eric Josselin (Universite de Montpellier II, in France), and Andre Maeder and Georges Meynet (Geneva Observatory, in Switzerland). Nat White of Lowell Observatory also participated in the study. The findings are being presented today at the American Astronomical Society meeting in San Diego, California. The group studied a sample of 74 red supergiant stars in the Milky Way. This research is significant in finally reconciling theory and observation for these stars. Red supergiants, massive stars nearing the ends of their lifetimes, are extremely cool and luminous – and very large.

The three stars with the largest known sizes are KW Sagitarii (distance 9,800 light-years), V354 Cephei (distance 9,000 light-years), and KY Cygni (distance 5,200 light-years), all with radii about 1500 times that of the Sun, or about 7 astronomical units (AU).

For comparison, the well-known red supergiant star Betelgeuse in the constellation Orion is known from other work to have a radius about 650 times that of the Sun, or about 3 AU. If one of these stars were placed in the sun's location, its outer layers would extend to midway between the orbits of Jupiter (5.2 AU) and Saturn (9.5 AU) [see figure].

The previous record holder, Herschel's "Garnet Star" (also known as "mu Cephei") comes in a close fourth in size in the study. The only other star for which a very large size has been claimed is the binary star system VV Cephei, which consists of a red supergiant and a hot companion orbiting within a common gaseous envelope, in which the gravitational forces of the companion have distended the surface of the supergiant and the meaning of the size of the star is therefore fuzzy. None of the stars in the new study are believed to be binaries, and thus their properties tell us about the extreme sizes that normal stars reach.

The study used the National Science Foundation's 2.1-meter (84-inch) telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory, located outside of Tucson, Arizona, and the 1.5-m (60-inch) telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, located outside of La Serena, Chile, in the foothills of the Andes. The new observations were combined with state-of-the-art computer models that contain improved data on the molecules that are found in the outer layers of these cool stars. The analysis yielded the most accurate temperatures yet found for this type of object. The temperatures of the coolest red supergiants are about 3450 Kelvins, or about 10 percent warmer than previously thought. Combined with modern estimates of the distances of these stars, the group was able to determine the stellar sizes as well.

"The significance of this study is that for the first time in many decades there is good agreement between the theory of how large and cool these stars should be, and how large and cool we actually observe them to be," explained Dr. Philip Massey, Astronomer at Lowell Observatory, the project's leader. "For the past two decades there has been a significant disagreement. The problem in this case turned out NOT to be the theory, but the 'observations' – the conversion between the observed qualities (brightness and spectral type) and the deduced properties (temperature and luminosity and/or size) needed improvement." The team's new analysis provides a better means of converting between these properties.

"These stars are not the most massive known," noted Levesque. "They are only 25 times the mass of the sun, while the most massive stars may have as much material as 150 suns. Nor are they the most luminous, as they are only about 300,000 times the luminosity of the sun, not the factor of 5 million or so attributed to the most luminous stars. They aren't even the coldest stars known – brown dwarfs have such low temperatures that they can't even fuse hydrogen. But the combination of modestly high luminosities and relatively low temperatures DOES mean that they are the biggest stars known, in terms of their stellar diameters."

The study has been submitted to the Astrophysical Journal for review and publication. Support was provided by a grant to Lowell Observatory by the National Science Foundation, which also provided support for Ms. Levesque's participation in the project through the Research Experiences for Undergraduates program at Northern Arizona University.

The largest Star known:

VY Canis Majoris (VY CMa) is a red hypergiant. This is the largest known star and one of the most luminous stars known.



Roberta M. Humphreys (2006) estimates the radius of VY CMa is between 1800 and 2100 solar radii. If our sun were replaced with such a star, its surface could extend to the orbit of Saturn.


There are two controversial opinions of the property of VY CMa. In one opinion (such as Roberta M. Humphreys' study [1]), the star is a very large and very luminous red hypergiant. In another opinion (such as Massey, Levesque, & Plez's study [2]), the star is a normal red supergiant, with a radius around 600 solar radii. In this case, its surface would extend well past the orbit of Mars. This star is likely to undergo a supernova stage by 3200. The distance from Earth to VY CMa is about 1.5 kiloparsecs (or 5,000 light-years).

Really wanna know the LARGEST STARS COMPARISION!!

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