Fun Space Facts and Sightings

Here are a few interesting facts that I learned (and still remember today) from our Astronomy tour last night.

• Earth is 8 light years from the brightest star in our sky, Sirius. The second brightest star in the sky, Canopus, is 309 light years away. That's crazy, isn't it! I can't even imagine how bright that star must be up close.
• The closest star to our Sun is over 4 light years away.
• There is a black whole in the middle of the Milky Way. Earth is located about 1/3 of the way into the middle of the milky way - but I was happy to learn that we are not traveling in towards the middle, towards the black hole, but will rather stay at our current distance away from the black hole.
• It takes the International Space Station just 90 minutes to orbit earth. It is traveling at 8km/second (just under 5 miles/second).
• When a star is dying it first turns into a red giant and then a white dwarf. A white dwarf is so dense with gas and dust that a cubic centimeter of matter of a white dwarf star would weight 2,000 lbs. It would essentially be like compacting all the matter in the sun into an area the size of the earth. Currently, about 1,300,000 Earths could fit inside the Sun!

Okay I'm starting to run out of facts that I can both remember and communicate to you in a way that makes sense.

For what we go to see, last night we got to see the Moon, Jupiter, and a globular cluster through the big telescope inside the observatory. We also looked as various constellations including Orion, the Seven Sisters, and the Southern Cross. We got to see Jupiter rise into the night sky and see the moon set. We got to see the International Space Station travel across the night sky - that was really cool. I waved but I'm not sure if they saw me. It's really cool to think there are humans up there that could be looking back down at us. Weird!

For those of you conspiracy theory believers, our guide, Alastair, walked us through all the reasons why we did actually land on the moon and it wasn't a video made in hollywood. If you want more information here, please let me know!

That's all for now.

Today I've jsut been lounging around reading and relaxing and catching up on sleep from our busy week and still from NYE! I finished HP Book 5 today and have started book 4. I had to read them out of order because that was the only order I could get the books in. It might not work to my advantage as far as the plot goes but it did as far as my personally enjoyment and entertainment goes.

Okay, that's actually all for now. 

Also - there will be a big reveal on my blog Thursday night. Hope you are all getting excited!

Best!