"Saturn's moon Iapetus (eye-AP-eh-tuss) is a very curious moon -- it seems to have a split personality! One hemisphere is covered with material darker than black velvet, while the other side is covered with material brighter than snow."

Fact from Nasa.gov! It's actually a pretty fascinating moon. It is tidally locked (like our moon), i.e. as it orbits Saturn, the same side always faces Saturn. Also, as wikipedia says, "it has a bulging waistline and squashed poles" and isn't actually a perfect sphere or ellipsoid.

"Mercury has wrinkles: As the iron core of the planet cooled and contracted, the surface of the planet became wrinkled. Scientist have named these wrinkles, Lobate Scarps. These Scarps can be up to a mile high and hundreds of miles long." source: https://space-facts.com/mercury/

We've been exploring space for more than 60 years, and have been lucky enough to get close-up pictures of dozens of celestial objects. Most notably, we've sent spacecraft to all of the planets in our solar system — Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune — as well as two dwarf planets, Pluto and Ceres.

That's awesome! What an amazing TC. o

Sent your prizes!

I think you missed my ping, but you won a prize from the first event! You can choose anything from the prize pool on the first post. ^_^

October 31, 2000 is the last time Earth had it's entire population living on it. The International Space Station went online on November 2, 2000.

Huh, I assume that day was to account for time zone variances or something!

On Venus, it snows metal and rains sulfuric acid.

(Sounds very scary, I would not want to visit..)

Sirius, also known as the Dog Star or Sirius A, is the brightest star in Earth's night sky. The name means "glowing" in Greek — a fitting description, as only a few planets, the full moon and the International Space Station outshine this star.

Congrats to the winners! :)

theres all kinds of stars but theres no green stars and they dont twinkle

The closest galaxy to our home galaxy is actually within our galaxy. Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy or Canis Major Overdensity has been known to exist for a little over a decade and we are closer to it than we are to the center of the Milky Way Galaxy.

Congrats to the winners :)

The initial ‘state’ of the universe was called the Planck epoch. It lasted a tiny fraction of a second, and at that point all matter of all kinds was condensed into a tiny point.

1. The word astronaut includes the root naut, from nautes, the Greek word for "sailor." This suffix can be used to create many travel-specific words. For example, the Argonauts were mythical Greek sailors on the ship named the Argo. Astronaut gets the astro from the Greek word astron, meaning "star," making an astronaut a “star sailor.”

2. Galaxy’s centre tastes of raspberries and smells of rum, say astronomers.

Arrr matey!

Edit:

right? or what the Planck? lmao

it was the Planck epoch or Planck era is the earliest stage of the Big Bang,

The hottest planet in our solar system is Venus. Venus has a lot of gasses in its atmosphere which creates a “Greenhouse Effect” that causes a constant temperature of 864° Fahrenheit (462° Celsius) everywhere on the plant’s surface.

Source=

Congrats to the winners!

There are more volcanoes on Venus than any other planet in our solar system.

The surface of Venus isn't visible due to the clouds of sulfuric acid completely shrouding the planet. The atmospheric pressure of the planet is roughly the pressure at 3,000 ft underwater on Earth and the surface temperature is around 850 °F.

In my high school astronomy class, my teacher took a "What would happen if you walked your dog on the surface of _______?" Venus was the most memorable, ignoring how you would even get to the surface (thick, acid clouds), basically you and your dog would be a pancake of fried matter. He was an interesting man.

Awesome! Congrats to the winners!

My space fact: On Season 4, Episode 10 of Doctor Who, The Doctor and Donna visit a resort planet that is completely made of Diamond! This episode aired in 2008 and only 4 years later on October 2012, it was announced that 55 Cancri e showed evidence for being a carbon planet meaning that it is covered in graphite and diamond rather than water and granite. It has eight times the mass of Earth, and twice the radius.

Congrats winners!

After comparing evidence gathered by Curiosity to locations on Earth, a team from Rice University concluded that Iceland’s basaltic terrain and cool temperatures are the closest analog terrain to ancient Mars there is. Source

Congrats to the winners! Those were some amazing space gifs that were posted.

Fact: The Horsehead nebula is about 1400 light years distant from Earth. It can be found just south of the belt in the constellation Orion.The nebula has a dark appearance because of dense dust and hydrogen gas that block other stars behind it.The Horsehead nebula is about 4 light years tall and 3 light years across.

Neptune’s moon, Triton, orbits the planet backwards!

Silly moon!

The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft was launched in 2016. It was sent to Bennu, which is believed to be a primitive asteroid. Scientists want a chance to examine this possible carbon-rich object. They hope that it has changed very little since the early days of our solar system. "Bennu is also one of the most potentially hazardous asteroids, with a relatively high probability of impacting Earth late in the 22nd century. Mission data will be critical to have in the event of an impact mitigation mission." -http://christensen.asu.edu/instrument/otes/

OSIRIS-REx reached Bennu in 2018 and will return with a sample to Earth in 2023. It is currently orbiting the asteroid waiting for the window to begin its journey back to us. "The departure window opens in March 2021 for OSIRIS-REx to begin its voyage home and the spacecraft is targeting delivery of the SRC to Earth on Sep. 24, 2023." -https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-s-osiris-rex-successfully-stows-sample-of-asteroid-bennu