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Astronomy is an interesting science to most people because it is filled with loads of fun astronomy facts. Everything from the size and temperature of our own star, the Sun, to the make-up of distant planets has been established. All of this information can be retold to entertain and enlighten your friends.

The Sun is a great font for astronomy fun facts. Our own star, which supplies us with all our heat and light is between 91 and 94.5 million miles from Earth. It’s not that nobody has measured the precise distance, but rather because the Earth revolves around the Sun in an ellipse, an uneven, orbit, so the distance varies depending on where the Earth is situated in that orbit.

The Sun is only an average size star, yet it’s size is another terrific source of astronomy fun facts. As average as it is, it accounts for about 98% of all the matter in our solar system. Even with the huge planet of Jupiter on our side, we’re still a tiny 2% of non Sun stuff.

It would take the diameter of about 100 Earths to stretch across this average Sun. The solar winds created by the Sun extends to about 50 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun. Or put another way, those solar winds go out about 50 AU’s, with an AU being the distance from the Sun to the Earth. That’s quite amazing, isn’t it?.

How about astronomy fun facts that don’t have anything to do with the Sun then? What about our Moon? It’s the only non-Earth object that man has walked on so far. And one man actually travelled to the Moon but never left it. Dr. Eugene Shoemaker really liked the Moon but was rejected as an astronaut. After his death, he was cremated and his ashes were sprinkled over the Moon by the Lunar Prospector spacecraft in 1999.

There are many more astronomy fun facts about the Moon. It’s the site of what may become the oldest footprint known to man. Neil Armstrong’s giant leap for mankind left a print in the Moon dust that will likely still be there in 10 million years time.

Lots of people, in fact about 13% of those asked in 1988, still believed the Moon is made of cheese. And finally, the suits worn by the Moon-walking astronauts weighed 180 pounds on Earth but only 30 pounds on the Moon, because of the Moon’s reduced gravity. Talk about losing weight, eh?

Astronomy fun facts aren’t limited to our close astronomical neighbours. Looking at stars is like looking into the past. Some of the stars we see today in the night sky are so far away that their light takes a million years to reach Earth. Some of the stars you see may really be images of stars a million years old that aren’t even there any more. There are over 1 x 10 ^22 stars in the universe. That’s a 1 followed by 22 zeros. The number is really quite awesome.

There are thousands of astronomy fun facts that we could relate. But, unfortunately, this article can not be that long. So, please, walk out there at night, look upwards and learn more about astronomy for yourself.

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Previous to their implementation of the Western solar calendar scheme, the Chinese almost exclusively followed their own lunar calendar for determining the times of planting and harvesting and festival days. Although people in China today use the Western calendar for almost all business, governmental and practical matters of daily life, the old system still serves as the basis for working out numerous recurring holidays. This coexistence of two calendar schemes has long been acknowledged by the people of China.

However, this does not only happen in China, it also happens in most other Eastern countries, like Thailand, and most Arabic countries.

A lunar month is determined by measuring the period of time needed for the moon to complete its full cycle of 29 and a half days, a standard that makes the lunar year a full eleven days shorter than its solar counterpart. This difference is corrected every 19 years by the addition of seven lunar months.

The 12 lunar months are further divided into 24 solar divisions distinguished by the four seasons and periods of heat and cold, all of which bear a close relationship to the annual cycle of agricultural work.

The Chinese calendar – very much like the Hebrew calendar- is a combination of the solar and lunar calendars in that it strives to have its years coincide with the tropical year and its months coincide with the synodic months. It is not surprising that a few similarities exist between the Chinese and the Hebrew calendar.

For example, an average year has 12 months, a leap year has 13 months. An ordinary year has 353, 354, or 355 days, a leap year has 383, 384, or 385 days. When determining what a Chinese year will be like, one needs to make a number of astronomical calculations.

First of all, you have to work out the dates for the new moons. In these instances, a new Moon is the completely black Moon (that is to say, when the Moon is in conjunction with the Sun), not the first visible crescent, as is used by the Islamic and Hebrew calendars. The date of a new moon is then the first day of a new month.

The reason why the majority of countries which had their own calendars had to dump them in favour of the Western, Julian calendar that we use today, is business. First the British and then the Americans ran international business and they used the Julian calendar.Anyone who wanted to work with them had to follow suit. This is why national policy often varies from local custom in Third World countries.

The government wants to trade on the International markets, but the normal family in the country can not. So, the government adopted the Julian calendar but the people only pay lip service to it. I live in Thailand and people here do not even use the 24 hour day divided into two halves. Their day has four sections of six hours each and the first part starts at 6AM, not midnight. Therefore, they have four 4 o’clocks a day, for instance but no 7 o’clocks. They are also 543 years ahead of us, although this is more common, for example in Muslim countries.

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