Beyond Earth: 20 Remarkable Facts About Our Solar System

11Earth's magnetic poles

Earth's magnetic poles

Earth's magnetic poles flip on average every 200,000 - 300,000 years. It flipped 780,000 years ago.


12Haumea

Haumea

There is a non-spherical, egg-shaped dwarf planet orbiting the Sun in our Solar System named Haumea. It is approximately 1/3 the size of Pluto.


13Pluto

Pluto

It takes 248 years for Pluto to orbit the Sun, meaning it hasn't even gotten halfway around the sun since it was discovered in 1930.


14Uranus magnetic field

Uranus magnetic field

Uranus has a magnetic field that "flickers" because the magnetic field is so off-kilter with its rotational axis that magnetic lines will snap apart and reconnect as it rotates. According to one astronomer, "Uranus is a geometric mess."


15Earth and Mars

Earth and Mars

Earth has enough iron to make 3 new planets, each with the same mass as Mars.


16Pluto and Charon

Pluto and Charon

Pluto is technically a binary system. Its moon, Charon, is massive enough in relation to Pluto that the point around which they orbit is somewhere in between the two.


17Io

Io

Jupiter's moon Io, the most volcanically active world in the Solar System, has volcanic eruptions so powerful that they can be seen with large telescopes on Earth.


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18Lunar Time Zone

Lunar Time Zone

Moon has its own time zone called Lunar Time Zone and President Richard Nixon was one of the few to have a moon watch.


19Charon

Charon

Pluto's largest moon Charon was named after astronomer James W. Christy's wife, Charlene. It was later discovered that Charon was an existing figure in Greek mythology (the ferryman of Hades, later known as Pluto), and thus the name was kept.


20Enceladus

Enceladus

An asteroid impact may have caused Enceladus, Saturn's moon, to wobble and eventually stabilize at a tilt that is 55 degrees "off" from its original orientation.

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