When a massive power outage struck southern California in the 1990s, Los Angeles residents reportedly called 911 to express alarm about strange clouds hovering overhead; they were seeing the Milky Way for the first time.
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The Sun and Moon appear to be the same size because the moon is 400 times smaller than the Sun, but 400 times closer to Earth.
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There are 5 to 10 times more stars in the known Universe than there are grains of sand on all the world's beaches, but a single grain of sand has more atoms than there are stars in the known Universe.
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An international team of astronomers has spotted the farthest known gravitational lens and, as Albert Einstein predicted, it is a galaxy that deflects and intensifies the light of a much further object.
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It takes a photon 170,000 years to travel from the core of the Sun to the surface, but only 8 minutes to travel the rest of the way to Earth.
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Scientists have confirmed that Enceladus, one of Saturn’s moons, has a watery ocean.
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On Titan, Saturn's largest moon, the atmosphere is so thick and the gravity so low that humans could fly through it by flapping "wings" attached to their arms.
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