Shoot for the Stars

Fun Facts About Stars

• From our perspective, the sun is massive. It has a diameter of 109 times that of the Earth. But when compared to other stars, our yellow dwarf star is considered average in size. There are plenty of stars much bigger.
• Stars change color as they age. Blue stars are generally young and burn very hot, while red stars are cooler and older. Yellow ones like our Sun have an intermediate age and temperature.
• Stars don't actually twinkle. Twinkling only happens because Earth's atmosphere bends their light. In the vacuum of space, they appear as steady, bright points of light.
• The sun is approximately 4.6 billion years old. That makes it a middle-aged star when compared to other stars in the Milky Way.
• Neutron stars are incredibly dense. A single sugar-cube-sized amount would weigh about a billion tons on Earth. That's equivalent to the weight of Mount Everest.
• Quick question: are there more grains of sand on Earth's beaches, or stars in the universe? If you guessed stars, you are correct. There are likely thousands of stars for every grain of sand on Earth.
• When you look at stars, you are looking into the past. That's because starlight takes years, centuries, even millions of years, to reach Earth. So if a star is exploding right now, we are not going to know about it for quite awhile.
• All atoms in the human body were made inside a star, with one exception: hydrogen. That element was created in the Big Bang at the origin of the universe.