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MOIYA MCTIER,
Astrophysicist, Folklorist, & Science Communicator
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Moiya McTier
Jun 14, 20191 min read
Astronomy Fun Fact #61
The Moon's physical diameter is ~2200 miles, but its angular diameter on the sky is ~0.5 degrees. If you hold your thumb out at arm's...
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Moiya McTier
Jun 13, 20191 min read
Astronomy Fun Fact #60
Io is one of Jupiter's largest moons and it's the most volcanically active world in the entire Solar System! Io is pretty close to...
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Moiya McTier
Jun 12, 20191 min read
Astronomy Fun Fact #59
Astronauts in space work out for about 2 hours EVERY DAY! People don't experience as much gravity in space as they do here on Earth,...
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Moiya McTier
Jun 11, 20191 min read
Astronomy Fun Fact #58
Most of the stars that were born as our galaxy formed are still "alive." Low mass stars take a loooooong time to burn through all of...
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Moiya McTier
Jun 10, 20191 min read
Astronomy Fun Fact #57
When astronomers talk about ice in space, we're rarely talking about water ice. Every material has a temperature where it becomes solid,...
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Moiya McTier
Jun 9, 20191 min read
Astronomy Fun Fact #56
When Jocelyn Bell Burnell first discovered the first pulsar in 1967, people thought she had detected a signal from aliens. No one knew...
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Moiya McTier
Jun 8, 20191 min read
Astronomy Fun Fact #55
One of the most accurate ways to measure time comes from space! There's a type of star called a pulsar that rotates at such a predictable...
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Moiya McTier
Jun 7, 20191 min read
Astronomy Fun Fact #54
The planet in our solar system with the most eccentric (meaning least circular) orbit is Mercury. Eccentricity is measured on a scale...
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Moiya McTier
Jun 6, 20191 min read
Astronomy Fun Fact #53
Do you remember learning in high school physics that g=9.8 m/s^2? That number is the gravitational acceleration, which a lot of people...
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Moiya McTier
Jun 5, 20191 min read
Astronomy Fun Fact #52
People talk about space like its suuuuuper cold because it is if you average over the entire universe. But if you went just outside of...
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Moiya McTier
Jun 4, 20191 min read
Astronomy Fun Fact #51
There are about 100 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, and there are about 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe (these are...
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Moiya McTier
Jun 3, 20191 min read
Astronomy Fun Fact #50
In Queen's "Don't Stop Me Now," Freddie Mercury sings "I'm traveling at the speed of light / I wanna make a supersonic man out of you."...
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Moiya McTier
Jun 2, 20191 min read
Astronomy Fun Fact #49
The average temperature in space (if you average across the entire universe) is about 3 degrees Kelvin, or about -458 degrees Fahrenheit....
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Moiya McTier
Jun 1, 20191 min read
Astronomy Fun Fact #48
There are more than 500,000 pieces of human-made debris moving around in space at around 17,500 mph! That’s fast enough to damage a space...
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Moiya McTier
May 31, 20191 min read
Astronomy Fun Fact #47
Earth loses about 90 MILLION kg every year because molecules in the upper atmosphere escape Earth's gravitational pull and fly off into...
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Moiya McTier
May 30, 20191 min read
Astronomy Fun Fact #46
The Earth is constantly gathering dust and rocks from space left over after the formation of the Solar System. The exact amount of dust...
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Moiya McTier
May 29, 20191 min read
Astronomy Fun Fact #45
Earth's orbit isn't perfectly round, it's an ellipse. So when people say the Earth is 93 million miles away from the Sun, that's just an...
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Moiya McTier
May 28, 20191 min read
Astronomy Fun Fact #44
Shooting stars aren't stars at all! They're actually meteors that start to burn from friction as they fall through Earth's atmosphere.
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Moiya McTier
May 27, 20191 min read
Astronomy Fun Fact #43
According to the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, the south pole of the Moon has a temperature of -397 degrees Fahrenheit. That's about 1...
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Moiya McTier
May 26, 20191 min read
Astronomy Fun Fact #42
There are many ways to determine the age of a star, but none are as accurate or as cool as the way we determined the age of the Sun. The...
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