Space Odyssey: 40 Amazing Facts About Our Universe

Saturn has a moon called Mimas. It is really peculiar in that it has a large crater in it that makes it look like the Death Star.

27. The average number of stars we can see with the naked eye is around 10,000. This number is only the 0.000004% of all stars in the Milky Way galaxy.

28. When a magnetar star named SGR 1806-20, which is on the other side of our galaxy, experienced a "star-quake", in one-tenth of a second, a flare was released which had more power than what our sun can produce in 150,000 years.

29. There is a nebula called Gomez's Hamburger that looks like a space burger. The buns are light reflecting off dust and the patty is a dark band of dust in the middle.

30. The moons of Saturn Janus, and Epimetheus change orbits once every 4 years. Due to gravitational interaction, the inner moon's momentum increases as the outer moon's momentum decreases.

Since the planet Neptune was first discovered in 1846 it has only orbited the Sun once, due to the fact its orbit is about 165 years.

32. The neutron star 'PSR J1748-2446ad' rotates on its axis 716 times per second and is the fastest spinning known neutron star. At its equator, it spins at 24 percent of the speed of light.

33. Callisto (one of Jupiter's moons) has about 99% the diameter of the planet Mercury, but only about a third of its mass.

34. The orbit of Mercury follows a unique pattern different from other planets which remained unexplained until Einstein’s theory of bending space-time due to large nearby gravitation. Previous theory was there was another planet between mercury and the sun, Vulcan.

35. From the time Pluto was discovered until the time it was demoted from planethood, it still hadn't made one complete revolution around the sun.

Uranus is the only planet named after a Greek god instead of a Roman one. If it had been named after the equivalent Roman god, we would have called it Caelus.

37. Mars’ moons, Phobos and Deimos orbit in opposite directions along the equator. To an observer on the surface, the moons would appear to track in opposite directions, and both moons would vanish behind the bulge of the planet at certain latitudes

38. The Tadpole Galaxy is a spiral galaxy with the distinct feature of having a 280,000 light-year long trail of stars that resemble a tail.

39. On Europa, one of Jupiter's moons, the ocean is 62 miles deep meaning you could fit seven Mt. Everest(s) one on top of the other inside it. The deepest part of our ocean, Marianas Trench, can only fit one with 2 miles to spare.

40. The north pole of Mars is surrounded by a flat and featureless lowland, several kilometers lower the mean height of the planet, called Vastitas Borealis.