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MOIYA MCTIER,
Astrophysicist, Folklorist, & Science Communicator
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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...
Moiya McTier
Jun 14, 20191 min read
6 views
1 comment
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...
Moiya McTier
Jun 13, 20191 min read
7 views
0 comments
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,...
Moiya McTier
Jun 12, 20191 min read
7 views
0 comments
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...
Moiya McTier
Jun 11, 20191 min read
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0 comments
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,...
Moiya McTier
Jun 10, 20191 min read
4 views
1 comment
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...
Moiya McTier
Jun 9, 20191 min read
27 views
0 comments
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...
Moiya McTier
Jun 8, 20191 min read
6 views
0 comments
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...
Moiya McTier
Jun 7, 20191 min read
6 views
0 comments
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...
Moiya McTier
Jun 6, 20191 min read
7 views
0 comments
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...
Moiya McTier
Jun 5, 20191 min read
9 views
0 comments
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...
Moiya McTier
Jun 4, 20191 min read
8 views
0 comments
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."...
Moiya McTier
Jun 3, 20191 min read
12 views
1 comment
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....
Moiya McTier
Jun 2, 20191 min read
8 views
0 comments
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...
Moiya McTier
Jun 1, 20191 min read
11 views
0 comments
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...
Moiya McTier
May 31, 20191 min read
12 views
0 comments
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...
Moiya McTier
May 30, 20191 min read
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0 comments
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...
Moiya McTier
May 29, 20191 min read
10 views
0 comments
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.
Moiya McTier
May 28, 20191 min read
9 views
0 comments
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...
Moiya McTier
May 27, 20191 min read
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0 comments
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...
Moiya McTier
May 26, 20191 min read
6 views
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