By Sakshi Sah
Published Jan 14, 2025

Hindustan Times
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Photo Credit: Flickr

5 mind-blowing facts about space and astronomy

Space is full of incredible and strange things. Let’s explore five amazing facts about space that will leave you amazed.

Although the Moon looks round in the night sky, it's actually shaped like a lemon. It has flattened poles and bulges around its equator.

Interactions with Earth caused the Moon to become squished at the poles and bulge at the equator.

In 2009, astronomers discovered that a giant cloud of gas and dust at the centre of the Milky Way smells like rum and raspberries.

This is due to a chemical called ethyl formate, which gives raspberries their flavour and has the scent of rum.

Mercury has very strange days and years. A day on Mercury lasts 59 Earth days, but its year is only 88 Earth days.

Due to its odd orbit, the time from one sunrise to the next on Mercury is 176 Earth days, which is twice as long as a year on the planet.

A neutron star is extremely dense. Just a teaspoon of this star’s material weighs as much as the entire human population.

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