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https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/moons/jupiter-moons/overview/?page=0&per_page=40&order=name+asc&search=&placeholder=Enter+moon+name&condition_1=9%3Aparent_id&condition_2=moon%3Abody_type%3Ailike
Learn about Jupiter’s 79 moons
Recommended if you like the moon

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Jupiter has 53 named moons and another 26 awaiting official names . Combined, scientists now think Jupiter has 79 moons.

There are many interesting moons orbiting the planet, but the ones of most scientific interest are the first four moons discovered beyond Earth-the Galilean satellites. More ›

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Jupiter has 53 named moons and another 26 awaiting official names . Combined, scientists now think Jupiter has 79 moons. There are many interesting moons orbiting the planet, but the ones of most scientific interest are the first four moons discovered beyond Earth-the Galilean satellites. More ›

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https://www.zmescience.com/other/feature-post/what-is-the-largest-star-in-the-known-universe/
Learn about this giant star called “UY Scuti” and the size and mass of it.
Recommended if you are into big space objects such as asteroids stars and planets

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Image via Pixabay.

Carl Sagan once said that there were more stars in the universe than grains of sand from every beach across the globe. According to a 2016 report published in the Astronomical Journal, that's probably true.

The study based on data from the Hubble Space Telescope over 20 years approximated that there are 2 trillion galaxies in the universe - that's galaxies, not stars. When you consider that the Milky Way - a rather average galaxy - contains 100 to 400 billion stars, you start to get an idea of just how ginormous the universe really is.

So when we look at the largest known star, there is a quite a large sample size. To get an idea, let's take a look at our very own star. The sun measures 870,000 miles (1.4 million km) across. You could fit a million Earths in there, with room to spare. And the sun is not even that large. In fact, our sun is pretty small as far as stars go. Technically speaking, it's a yellow dwarf.

Obviously, stars are a little harder to gauge than planets as they are always flexing unlike planets which are, for the most part, relatively consistent. "The complication with stars is that they have diffuse edges," writes astronomer Jillian Scudder of the University of Sussex. "Most stars don't have a rigid surface where the gas ends and vacuum begins, which would have served as a harsh dividing line and easy marker of the end of the star."

This means that there is no specific surface where gases ends and the vacuum starts. Astrophysicists then have to rely on a star's photosphere, which is where the start becomes transparent to light and photons can escape the star.

With that said, so far, the winner of largest star in the known universe probably goes to UY Scuti - a massive red supergiant located in our own Milky Way galaxy in the constellation Scutum and measures about 750 million miles, or nearly eight astronomical units.

You could fit 489 trillion Earths into the volume of this star. Put another way, if you replaced our sun with UY Scuti, Saturn would take the place of Mercury as the closest planet to the sun - everything else would be engulfed by UY Scuti. If you take into account the star's atmosphere, and the nebula of gas lost from the start, it would reach out to 400 astronomical units, 10 times further out than Pluto.

Our entire solar system couldn't contain the star and its atmosphere.

UY Scuti has a radius of 1,700 times larger than our Sun.

The star is located just a few degrees north of the A-type star Gamma Scuti and northeast of the Eagle Nebula. While UY Scuti is very luminous, at its brightest, it is only 9th magnitude when viewed from our home planet due to its distance and location in the Zone of Avoidance within the Cygnus rift.

"(W)hile UY Scuti is only around 30 times more massive than the sun, it has a radius somewhere in the region of 1,700 times larger than the radius of the sun," says Scudder. "This star is one of a class of stars that varies in brightness because it varies in size, so this number is also likely to change over time."

It was originally discovered by German astronomers at the Bonn Observatory in 1860 who were completing a survey of stars for the Bonner Durchmusterung Stellar Catalogue. However, it wasn't until 2012 when UY Scuti was viewed through the originally-named Very Large Telescope using AMBER interferometry in Chile's Atacama Desert that the reality of the star's true size really hit home. This officially put UY Scuti in the record books as the largest star, topping previous record holders such as Betelgeuse, VY Canis Majoris and NML Cygni.

Based on current models of evolution, UY Scuti has begun to fuse helium, and continues to fuse hydrogen in a shell around the core. The location of the star deep inside the Milky Way suggests that UY Scuti is a metal-rich star. After fusing heavy elements, the star's core will then begin to produce iron, which disrupts the balance of gravity and radiation in the core and results in a core collapse supernova. It is then expected that stars like UY Scuti should evolve back to hotter temperatures to become a yellow hypergiant, luminous blue variable, or a Wolf-Rayet star.

One thing with stars is that mass and physical volume don't always necessarily correlate, especially for the big ones. The gold medal for largest mass goes to RMC 136a1 (usually abbreviated to R136a1). It also has the highest mass and luminosity of any known star, with a 315 solar mass and a 8.7 million solar luminosity. It is also one of the hottest, at around a steamy 53,000 degrees Kelvin (94,940 Fahrenheit / 52,727 Celsius). While R136a1 comes in at around 265 times as large as the sun, it is only 30 times the radius of it.

So the next time you look at our sun (don't do it too often though), just think about the awesome stuff that the universe has to offer and wonder if there might be a star bigger which we just have not discovered yet.

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What is the largest star in the known universe?

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Carl Sagan once said that there were more stars in the universe than grains of sand from every beach across the globe. According to a 2016 report published in the Astronomical Journal, that's probably true. The study based on data from the Hubble Space Telescope over 20 years approximated that there are 2 trillion galaxies in the universe - that's galaxies, not stars.

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How much is the international space station

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How much is the international space station

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International space station price
https://www.motorbiscuit.com/international-space-station-good-investment/
Learn the cost this is good for helping you learn about the ISS

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The International Space Station was launched on November 20th, 1998. And since then, it eats up about $4 billion a year to keep the ISS floating through space. But to some, investing in this space station has been nothing but a waste of money for over 20 years. So what experiments have been performed on the ISS, and are they worth the expense?

The International Space Station In Orbit | NASA

How much does the ISS cost?

Over its 20+ years in orbit, the international space station costs over $150 billion to develop, making it the most expensive thing ever built. Currently, it costs $88,000 to $164,000 per person per day to operate things. And with seven people on board the ISS, it costs around $616,000 to $1.2 million per day. Most of the money sunk into the space station is fronted by NASA, but other nations such as Russia, Europe, Japan, and Canada all chip in.

Those high costs have been the topic of debate in congress since the space station first launched. In fact, there were plans to retire the ISS in 2000, much earlier than expected. The only saving grace for the station was to shift it toward commercial use. In other words, commercial space colonization has been on the table since the 90s.

Unfortunately, using the International Space Station for commercial purposes hasn't taken off (quite literally). Elon Musk and SpaceX are close, sending a manned mission to the ISS for the first time back in April, and other cargo missions to the ISS. But these weren't private endeavors, as all four of the crew members were trained astronauts, and they're on the space station to perform scientific research. Likewise, the cargo was all sent for feeding said astronauts, and performing experiments.

What does the ISS research?

Astronaut Working Inside ISS | NASA

RELATED: What Is the Inspiration Behind SpaceX's Inspiration4 All-Civilian Space Mission?
Astronauts have performed over 3,000 experiments onboard the International Space Station to understand zero-gravity's effects over long periods of time. NASA highlights the areas of research, which range from the smallest cells to the earth itself.

One of the more crucial areas of research has to do with humans. The development and growth of our bodies is vastly different in the ISS's zero-gravity environment than it is on earth. And if we're going to send manned missions to Mars, we must know how our body reacts to zero gravity.

While it wasn't onboard the International Space Station, Valeri Vladimirovich Polyakov set the record for most consecutive days in space. He spent 437 consecutive days on board the Mir Space station, which launched in 1986. However, that station was sent to burn up in the earth's atmosphere in 2001.

Astronauts living on the ISS also research the Earth, taking photographs and using satellites to compile data on glaciers and coral reefs. Technologies are also sent to the ISS for testing. Most recently, a human-like robot arm was sent, which could perform dangerous tasks.

But some scientists don't see that as enough. The Guardian spoke to Sir Martin Rees, a British astronaut, who explained, "the scientific returns have been meager. We have learned a bit about how the body reacts to spending long periods in space, and we have grown a few crystals in zero-gravity, but that is in no way commensurate to the tens of billions of dollars that have been spent on the ISS."

And while that may be true, there might be more to the International Space Station than just scientific research.

The International Space Station may be more symbolic than anything

Space Shuttle Nearing ISS Port Hole For Docking | NASA

Think of it this way: the ISS cost $100 billion to get into space in the first place. And it required efforts from America, Europe, Japan, and Russia, who've all been to war in some capacity. But in terms of space, the final frontier, nations seem to unify. In fact, if aliens were to attack right now, the US and Russian governments would join forces to repel the attack.

But there's even more to it than international collaboration. The International Space Station proves it's possible for humans, no matter where they're from, to call space home. Even if it's for a year or so, spending that amount of time away from earth is no easy feat. But it's possible, and it's paving the way for more long-term missions in the future.

Some may see it as a 23-year-old piece of space junk, costing half of NASA's annual budget just to keep running. But the astronauts who've experienced life on the ISS, while performing scientific experiments, see it as a starting point for more manned missions to other planets in the somewhat near future.

RELATED: Discoveries on Mars and Titan May Hold the Key to Safer Space Travel

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Is the International Space Station Actually a Good Investment?

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The International Space Station was launched on November 20th, 1998. And since then, it eats up about $4 billion a year to keep the ISS floating through space. But to some, investing in this space station has been nothing but a waste of money for over 20 years.

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https://www.bbcearth.com/on-saturn-it-literally-rains-diamonds
Find out why it rains diamonds on Saturn I recommend reading this if your interested in Saturn

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On saturn, it literally rains diamonds | BBC Earth

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Sign up to receive news, updates and exclusives from BBC Earth and related content from BBC Studios by email.

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https://www.space.com/15421-black-holes-facts-formation-discovery-sdcmp.html
Learn about black holes
I recommend this if you wanna learn more about black holes and space

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Black holes are some of the strangest and most fascinating objects in space. They're extremely dense, with such strong gravitational attraction that not even light can escape their grasp.

The Milky Way could contain over 100 million black holes, though detecting these gluttonous beasts is very difficult. At the heart of the Milky Way lies a supermassive black hole - Sagittarius A*. The colossal structure is about 4 million times the mass of the sun and lies approximately 26,000 light-years away from , according to a statement from NASA.

The first image of a black hole was captured in 2019 by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration. The striking photo of the black hole at the center of the M87 galaxy 55 million light-years from Earth thrilled scientists around the world.

Related: White holes: What we know about black holes' neglected twins

Black hole FAQs answered by an expert

We asked theoretical astrophysicist Priyamvada Natarajan a few commonly asked questions about black holes.

Theoretical Astrophysicist

First black hole discovered

Albert Einstein first predicted the existence of black holes in 1916, with his general theory of relativity. The term "black hole" was coined many years later in 1967 by American astronomer John Wheeler. After decades of black holes being known only as theoretical objects.

The first black hole ever discovered was Cygnus X-1, located within the Milky Way in the constellation of Cygnus, the Swan. Astronomers saw the first signs of the black hole in 1964 when a sounding rocket detected celestial sources of X-rays according to NASA. In 1971, astronomers determined that the X-rays were coming from a bright blue star orbiting a strange dark object. It was suggested that the detected X-rays were a result of stellar material being stripped away from the bright star and "gobbled" up by the dark object - an all-consuming black hole.

How many black holes are there?

According to the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) approximately one out of every thousand stars is massive enough to become a black hole. Since the Milky Way contains over 100 billion stats, our home galaxy must harbor some 100 million black holes.

Though detecting black holes is a difficult task and estimates from NASA suggest there could be as many as 10 million to a billion stellar black holes in the Milky Way.

The closest black hole to Earth is dubbed " The Unicorn" and is situated approximately 1,500 light-years away. The nickname has a double meaning. Not only does the black hole candidate reside in the constellation Monoceros ("the unicorn"), its incredibly low mass - about three times that of the sun - makes it nearly one of a kind.
Related: How many black holes are there in the universe?
Black hole images

In 2019 the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration released the first image ever recorded of a black hole. The EHT saw the black hole in the center of galaxy M87 while the telescope was examining the event horizon or the area past which nothing can escape from a black hole. The image maps the sudden loss of photons (particles of light). It also opens up a whole new area of research in black holes, now that astronomers know what a black hole looks like.

In 2021, astronomers revealed a new view of the giant black hole at the center of M87, showing what the colossal structure looks like in polarized light. As polarized light waves have a different orientation and brightness compared to unpolarized light, the new image shows the black hole in even more detail. Polarization is a signature of magnetic fields and the image makes it clear that the black hole's ring is magnetized.

In May 2022, scientists revealed the historic first image of the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy - Sagitarrius A*.

Related: The 1st photo of the Milky Way's monster black hole explained in images

What do black holes look like?

Black holes have three "layers": the outer and inner event horizon, and the singularity.

The event horizon of a black hole is the boundary around the mouth of the black hole, past which light cannot escape. Once a particle crosses the event horizon, it cannot leave. Gravity is constant across the event horizon.

The inner region of a black hole, where the object's mass lies, is known as its singularity, the single point in space-time where the mass of the black hole is concentrated.

Scientists can't see black holes the way they can see stars and other objects in space. Instead, astronomers must rely on detecting the radiation black holes emit as dust and gas are drawn into the dense creatures. But supermassive black holes, lying in the center of a galaxy, may become shrouded by the thick dust and gas around them, which can block the telltale emissions.

Sometimes, as matter is drawn toward a black hole, it ricochets off the event horizon and is hurled outward, rather than being tugged into the maw. Bright jets of material traveling at near-relativistic speeds are created. Although the black hole remains unseen, these powerful jets can be viewed from great distances.

The EHT's image of a black hole in M87 (released in 2019) was an extraordinary effort, requiring two years of research even after the images were taken. That's because the collaboration of telescopes, which stretches across many observatories worldwide, produces an astounding amount of data that is too large to transfer via the internet.

With time, researchers expect to image other black holes and build up a repository of what the objects look like. The next target is likely Sagittarius A*, which is the black hole in the center of our own Milky Way galaxy. Sagittarius A* is intriguing because it is quieter than expected, which may be due to magnetic fields smothering its activity, a 2019 study reported. Another study that year showed that a cool gas halo surrounds Sagittarius A*, which gives unprecedented insight into what the environment around a black hole looks like.

Types of black holes

So far, astronomers have identified three types of black holes: stellar black holes, supermassive black holes and intermediate black holes.

Stellar black holes - small but deadly

When a star burns through the last of its fuel, the object may collapse, or fall into itself. For smaller stars (those up to about three times 's mass), the new core will become a neutron star or a white dwarf. But when a larger star collapses, it continues to compress and creates a stellar black hole.

Black holes formed by the collapse of individual stars are relatively small but incredibly dense. One of these objects packs more than three times the mass of the sun into the diameter of a city. This leads to a crazy amount of gravitational force pulling on objects around the object. Stellar black holes then consume the dust and gas from their surrounding galaxies, which keeps them growing in size.

Supermassive black holes - the birth of giants

Small black holes populate the universe, but their cousins, supermassive black holes, dominate. These enormous black holes are millions or even billions of times as massive as the sun but are about the same size in diameter. Such black holes are thought to lie at the center of pretty much every galaxy, including the Milky Way.

Scientists aren't certain how such large black holes spawn. Once these giants have formed, they gather mass from the dust and gas around them, material that is plentiful in the center of galaxies, allowing them to grow to even more enormous sizes.

Supermassive black holes may be the result of hundreds or thousands of tiny black holes that merge. Large gas clouds could also be responsible, collapsing together and rapidly accreting mass. A third option is the collapse of a stellar cluster, a group of stars all falling together. Fourth, supermassive black holes could arise from large clusters of dark matter. This is a substance that we can observe through its gravitational effect on other objects; however, we don't know what dark matter is composed of because it does not emit light and cannot be directly observed.

Scientists once thought that black holes came in only small and large sizes, but research has revealed the possibility that midsize, or intermediate, black holes (IMBHs) could exist. Such bodies could form when stars in a cluster collide in a chain reaction. Several of these IMBHs forming in the same region could then eventually fall together in the center of a galaxy and create a supermassive black hole.

In 2014, astronomers found what appeared to be an intermediate-mass black hole in the arm of a spiral galaxy. And in 2021 astronomers took advantage of an ancient gamma-ray burst to detect one.

"Astronomers have been looking very hard for these medium-sized black holes," study co-author Tim Roberts, of the University of Durham in the United Kingdom, said in a statement. "There have been hints that they exist, but IMBHs have been acting like a long-lost relative that isn't interested in being found."

Research, from 2018, suggested that these IMBHs may exist in the heart of dwarf galaxies (or very small galaxies). Observations of 10 such galaxies (five of which were previously unknown to science before this latest survey) revealed X-ray activity - common in black holes - suggesting the presence of black holes of from 36,000 to 316,000 solar masses. The information came from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, which examines about 1 million galaxies and can detect the kind of light often observed coming from black holes that are picking up nearby debris.

Binary black holes: double trouble

In 2015, astronomers using the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) detected gravitational waves from merging stellar black holes.

"We have further confirmation of the existence of stellar-mass black holes that are larger than 20 solar masses - these are objects we didn't know existed before LIGO detected them," David Shoemaker, the spokesperson for the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC), said in a statement. LIGO's observations also provide insights into the direction a black hole spins. As two black holes spiral around one another, they can spin in the same direction or the opposite direction.

There are two theories on how binary black holes form. The first suggests that the two black holes in a binary form at about the same time, from two stars that were born together and died explosively at about the same time. The companion stars would have had the same spin orientation as one another, so the two black holes left behind would as well.

Under the second model, black holes in a stellar cluster sink to the center of the cluster and pair up. These companions would have random spin orientations compared to one another according to LIGO Scientific Collaboration. LIGO's observations of companion black holes with different spin orientations provide stronger evidence for this formation theory.

"We're starting to gather real statistics on binary black hole systems," said LIGO scientist Keita Kawabe of Caltech, who is based at the LIGO Hanford Observatory. "That's interesting because some models of black hole binary formation are somewhat favored over the others even now, and in the future, we can further narrow this down."

If you fell into a black hole, theory has long suggested that gravity would stretch you out like spaghetti, though your death would come before you reached the singularity. But a 2012 study published in the journal Nature suggested that quantum effects would cause the event horizon to act much like a wall of fire, which would instantly burn you to death.

Black holes don't suck. Suction is caused by pulling something into a vacuum, which the massive black hole definitely is not. Instead, objects fall into them just as they fall toward anything that exerts gravity, like the Earth.

The first object considered to be a black hole is Cygnus X-1. Cygnus X-1 was the subject of a 1974 friendly wager between Stephen Hawking and fellow physicist Kip Thorne, with Hawking betting that the source was not a black hole. In 1990, Hawking conceded defeat.

Miniature black holes may have formed immediately after the Big Bang. Rapidly expanding space may have squeezed some regions into tiny, dense black holes less massive than the sun.

If a star passes too close to a black hole, the star can be torn apart.

Astronomers estimate that the Milky Way has anywhere from 10 million to 1 billion stellar black holes, with masses roughly three times that of the sun.

Black holes remain terrific fodder for science fiction books and movies. Check out the movie "Interstellar," which relied heavily on Thorne to incorporate science. Thorne's work with the movie's special effects team led to scientists' improved understanding of how distant stars might appear when seen near a fast-spinning black hole.

Black hole facts

Additional resources

Dive deeper into the mystery of black holes with NASA Science. Watch videos and read more about black holes from NASA's Hubblesite. Discover more about black holes with the National Science Foundation.

Bibliography

Hubblesite: Black holes: Gravity's relentless pull interactive: Encyclopedia. STScI Home. Retrieved May 6, 2022.

NASA. Imagine the universe! NASA. Retrieved May 6, 2022.

Boen, B. (2013, August 29). Supermassive black hole Sagittarius A*. NASA. Retrieved May 6, 2022.

NASA's Chandra Finds Intriguing Member of Black Hole Family Tree. Chandra X-ray Observatory. (2015, February 25). Retrieved May 6, 2022.

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Black holes: Everything you need to know

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Black holes are real, they're some of the strangest objects in space. Discover what black holes are and how they form with our informative black hole guide.

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https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-selects-developer-for-rocket-to-retrieve-first-samples-from-mars
NASA plans to launch a rocket to Mars to collect samples of rock find out how they will do this, this also can help you learn about rocks and space and outer space.

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NASA Selects Developer for Rocket to Retrieve First Samples from Mars

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NASA has awarded a contract to Lockheed Martin Space of Littleton, Colorado, to build the Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV), a small, lightweight rocket to launch rock, sediment, and atmospheric samples from the surface of the Red Planet.