1. How far up in the sky the North Star is depends on where you are latitudinally. So North Star at Bourbonnais is 43° above the horizon at all times... Bourbonnais is 43° above the Equator.
2. The North Star isn't always what the Earth's northern axis points at. Just like a top, the Earth wobbles as it spins. Only it takes 26,000 years to get one wobble around. So, like 6,000 years ago, the axis pointed at a star in Draco the Dragon or the Big Dipper, and that was the star that never moved in our sky.
3. Because of the above, Astrology isn't presently accurate (ignoring the fact that it's not really accurate anyway). What I mean is, zodiac signs are off. Zodiac signs are based off of when a constellation passes the celestial equator, and they were organized and first used many many years ago. So they're not completely correct. I'm actually a Sagittarius, not a Capricorn. Resultingly, I'm a completely different person. Who knew love wasn't actually in the air for me?
4. The highest the sun ever gets in south in winter is 26° off the horizon. That's not very high. That's a little more than half the height of where the North Star is for us.
5. As mass increases, temperature of an object also increases, and the color changes. Hottest objects are blue, coolest are red or yellow. Thus, Sun is a smaller, cooler star.
6. You can fit 4 moons across the diameter of the Earth.
You can fit 30 Earth's in the space between the Earth and the Moon.
You can fit 110 Earths across the diameter of the Sun.
You can fit 2 of the Moon's orbits across the diameter of the Sun.
You can fit 110 Suns in the space between the Sun and the Earth.
7. The sun has been around for about 4.5 billion years. Will probably be around for another 5 billion years.
8. When the Sun gets to the end of its life, thermonuclear fusion in the core will start moving outward toward the surface. As it moves outward, the Sun will expand dramatically and will become a Red Giant. So large that it will touch Mars' orbit. Meaning, it will swallow up Mercury, Venus, and Earth.
9. Mathematicians have figured out how to combat the above. If we start now, we can build huge rockets that can push the Earth's orbit out so much each year that by the time the Sun starts expanding, we will be out of its reach.
10. After the Sun is a Red Giant for a while, it will eventually, like all the other low-mass stars when they get to this stage, release all of its gases and all that will be left will be the core, which is called a White Dwarf, essentially, its skeleton. A White Dwarf star is made up of highly compressed carbon. What else is highly compressed carbon? Diamonds. So Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds wasn't so far off. So why don't we just harvest these stars and take the diamond? Because White dwarf stars are incredibly dense. 40% of a star packs down into a star about the size of the Earth. See #6. A White Dwarf star is so dense, a teaspoon of its material would weigh about 5 tons on Earth. Have fun carrying that home. =)
So... do you feel small?
