THE SUN
This gigantic star is our Sun and is at the centre of our Solar System, it is so huge that Earth could fit inside it over 1. 2 million times and its diameter is equivalent to 109 Earths side by side, it contains 98% of the entire mass of the Solar System and it is the Suns huge gravity that holds the planets in their orbits. The Sun has been active for about 4.6 billion years and is expected to last another 5 billion years so no need to worry just yet. The outer visible layer reaches a temperature of 6,000 degrees kelvin but the core reaches 13.6 million degrees kelvin. Our Sun is just one of millions in our Galaxy but the nearest star to ours is 4. 24 light years away and is named Proxima Centauri [more about Galaxies and distances further on] In prehistoric and ancient times the Sun was treated as a God and later was worshipped by civilizations such as the Incas and Aztecs. Many stone megaliths were built to celebrate the summer solstice one of the most famous is here in England and that is Stonehenge. The sunlight we see today has taken 30,000 years to travel from the core of the Sun to the surface but then takes only just over 7 minutes to reach Earth.

THE MOON
Although not a planet we must include our own moon which orbits our planet once every 27 days 7 hours and 43 minutes and is the only extraterrestrial body visited by humans, the first visit being 20th July 1969 and since then Apollo and Luna missions have brought back approximately 380kg of Moon rock and scientists still examine these rocks today. It is now believed by many that Earth collided with a huge object millions of years ago and that the moon was formed with material from this collision. The Moon has been heavily bombarded by meteorites and other objects and has many large craters, the craters on the near side are named after figures from the history of science such as Copernicus, Ptolemaeus and Tycho, but the far side has a slightly Russian flavour such as Gagarin and Korolev. There is no atmosphere on the Moon but it is now believed that at the permanently shaded South Pole there could be ice in some craters.

ASTEROIDS
Asteroids are rock and metallic objects that orbit the Sun but are much too small to be classed as planets, they range from about 1,000 km such as one named Ceres down to just small stones or pebbles, some have entered inside Earths orbit several of them in centuries ago have actually collided with our planet but most are in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. There are several hundred thousand asteroids and probably tens of thousands more that are too small to be seen and recorded from Earth, more are discovered every year but not many are named. There are various types of asteroids the main three being C-type which total approx. 75% of those known and are composed of similar material to the Sun minus hydrogen, helium and various other gases. S-type about 17% their make up being nickel-iron and iron with magnesium silicates. M-type most of the remainder and are pure nickel there are also several other very rare types. The total mass of all the asteroids is less than that of the Moon.

COMETS
Comets are sometimes called dirty snowballs or icy mud balls. They are a mixture of ices which are water and frozen gases and dust that for some reason didn't get incorporated into planets when the Solar System was formed. This makes them very interesting as samples of the early history of the Solar System there are Chinese records of Haleys comet going back to at least 240 BC. The famous Bayeuz Tapestry which commemorates the Norman Conquest of England in 1066 depicts an apparition of Comet Haley. When comets are near enough to the Sun they heat up and melt. They have several distinct parts which are the Nucleus, mostly ice and gas with a small amount of dust and are quite solid and stable. Coma, a dense cloud of water, carbon dioxide and other gases. Hydrogen Cloud, which can be millions of km in diameter but very sparse envelope of neutral hydrogen. Dust Tail, up to 10 million km long composed of smoke-sized dust particles driven off the nucleus by escaping gases; this is the most prominent part of a comet and can be seen by us without binoculars or telescope. Iron Tail, this can be several hundred km long composed of plasma with rays and streamers caused by the solar winds. The longest ever recorded comet tail was The Great Comet in 1843 which was 800 million km long.

METEORITES
Meteorites are bright streaks of light in the sky (a 'shooting star' or a 'falling star') produced by the entry of a small meteoroid into the Earth's atmosphere, they are bits of the Solar System that have fallen to the Earth. Most come from asteroids, but a few are believed to come from comets. A small number of meteorites have been shown to be of Lunar or Martian origin, they are difficult to classify, but the three broadest groupings are stony, stony iron, and iron. The most common meteorites are chondrites, which are stony meteorites that have been aged at 4.55 billion years old, and are considered to be pristine samples of early Solar System matter, some meteorites are split into smaller groups but the main ones are as stated above. When Earth's orbit meets a meteor stream, the meteor rate is increased and a meteor shower results. A meteor shower could well be active for several days. An intense meteor shower is called a meteor storm. Sporadic meteors are believed to have had a gradual loss of orbital coherence with a meteor shower due to collisions and radiative effects, further enhanced by gravitational influences. There is still some debate concerning sporadic meteors and their relationship with showers.

The chart below shows in miles and km the Planets diameter, distance from the Sun and time in Earth days or years taken to complete one orbit of the Sun.
Dwarf Planets in Red Text *
Distances from the Sun are an average depending on position in Orbit

Looking at the figures relating to Neptune and Pluto you will see that Neptune takes 165 years to complete one orbit of the Sun and was discovered approx 150 years ago Pluto takes 248.5 years for one orbit and was first discovered in 1930 just 76 years ago so they both have not yet completed one orbit of the Sun since they were discovered.

THE SPEED OF LIGHT
Although some of the figures above are starting to look huge especially at the bottom end of the chart once we leave our Solar System and enter into the Galaxies and the overall picture of the Universe these figures soon look very small and make us realise that our Solar System is just a speck in the Universe. Also you will find that instead of ” millions “of miles being referred to there is a change to “light years “ this is a fascinating subject and many of you will understand it already but for beginners or people who have not understood it before we will try to explain it by breaking a light year into miles which hopefully will help later in our text. Firstly a light year is the distance light travels in one year much the same as a more common term used when talking about the speed of sound, light travels at 186,282 miles per second but most reports state 186,000 now that is pretty quick one blink of the eye at that speed would mean you missed a whole lot of scenery. When you look up the speed of light the figure above is what you will find some may take a step further and tell you this figure equates to 11,160,000 miles per minute, already you can see how the figures will soon become huge, once at this stage most average calculators cannot take you much further in fact that’s it, so out with the pencil and paper and a clear brain and take it further. If you had a spacecraft that could travel at the speed of light we can now [hopefully] work out how many miles are travelled.

Already you can see why miles are converted into time as this is what happens when you refer to light years, figures like this soon become difficult to express the "1 day" figure for instance would be "sixteen thousand and ninety four million, seven hundred and sixty four thousand miles " and we have only travelled one day, please don't ask how much gas have we used.

Now to express the “year” figure is made even more complicated because at this stage you would start using the term “billion” but unfortunately there are two different “billions” an English and an American billion, an English billion is 1,000,000,000,000 which is one million million and the American billion which is 1,000,000,000 being one thousand million, so which is correct or are they both correct, to express the year figure the English way would be “five billion, eight hundred and fifty eight thousand four hundred and ninety four million, three hundred and eighty seven thousand two hundred miles ” per year, or the easy way would be “just over five point eight five billion miles”. It does seem strange that we brits have something bigger than America [only joking] but the American billion sounds bigger it would be ”five thousand eight hundred and fifty eight billion four hundred and ninety four million, three hundred and eighty seven thousand two hundred miles”, or “just under five thousand eight hundred and fifty eight point five billion miles”.

Which ever way you choose it really is too complicated to use but now you know how many miles are in a light year and will find it easier using this term although it is still mind boggling to picture any distance over and above several thousand miles for most people, you really need to just sit and think about it for a while. Most tutorials and other sources tend to use the American billion so to make it easier will also use the American billion Distances in our Solar System are also measured in a Giga metre which is 1,000,000 km, a much larger measurement is AU which is Astronomical Unit, one AU equals the mean distance between the Sun and the Earth which is 149,600,000 km, so for instance Jupiter would be 5.2 AU from the Sun, using all the above terms seem to make every planet closer to us BUT they are NOT, using these terms however make it much easier.

RULING PLANETS FOR STAR SIGNS
This is the modern version that has been In use after the discovery of Uranus, Neptune and Pluto and is still disputed by some groups today

THE MILKY WAY is the name of our Galaxy where our Solar System lies, the term milky originates from the hazy band of white light appearing across the sky visible from Earth. Apart from our Sun there are an estimated 300 billion other stars in our Galaxy, some reports state there could be as many as 400 billion all with their own planets, there are also thousands of Clusters and Nebulae. Clusters are concentrations of between ten thousand and 1 million stars, most reports state that these Clusters are much older than other stars and were formed between 12 and 20 billion years ago, again reports do vary. Diffuse Nebulae are massive clouds of interstellar matter, this is thin masses of gas and dust.

Our Galaxy is gigantic it is known as a Spiral Galaxy which is split into three main parts, the main Disc measures about 100,000 light years in diameter and between 250,000 and 300,000 light years in circumference, the Disk has four spiral arms, the Bulge or Galactic Core at the centre of the Galaxy which is a dense region of very old stars probably 10 million years old and there are several reports of growing evidence to there also being a massive Black Hole at its centre, the presence of high velocities in the stars and gas near the centre of the Galaxy has lead astronomers to believe this for some time. The Halo which extends out to between 250,000 and 400,000 light years in diameter is a spherical region surrounding the Disc and is again clusters of very old stars. Our Solar System which already starts to sound smaller is situated in the outer reaches of the Galaxy but well within the Disc in one of the spiral arms named the Local Arm or the Orion Arm which is a connection between the massive arms of Sagittarius and Perseus, put into perspective if the Galaxy were shrunk to a distance of 130km our Solar System would measure just 2mm.

The estimated age of our Galaxy is 13.6 billion years which is nearly as old as the Universe, the estimate is based on research carried out in 2004 by a team of astronomers, this was extensive research which included measuring the Beryllium content of stars for the first time, all very, very complicated and completely beyond most peoples understanding, well certainly mine. Scientists in Germany have backed the results of earlier reports that stars they have studied near the galactic centre are travelling at speeds nearing 3 million miles per hour. Our Galaxy, the Andromeda Galaxy and the Triangulum Galaxy are the main members of what is referred to as the Local Group which is comprised of a close group of 35 galaxies which is part of the Virgo Cluster. It takes our Solar system between approx 230 and 250 million years to complete one orbit and so has only completed about 25 orbits during its lifetime.

Recent reports state the Andromeda Galaxy is speeding towards our Galaxy at 300kms per second and that we could both collide in another 3 to 4 billion years, once again no need to worry just yet then, if this does happen it is thought that our Sun and other stars will form another Galaxy over the course of about 1 billion years. Many astronomers state that our Galaxy is travelling through space at 600km per second and is thought to be travelling in the direction of the constellation of Hydra.

This is a massive subject on its own so we have compiled a very brief view of the Universe hopefully with the facts you are looking for. If you are starting to think our Galaxy sounds almost too big to picture then hold on for our Galaxy is just ONE OF BILLIONS that make up the Universe, it is well beyond most peoples imagination but amazing when you sit and just think about it, but WHAT exactly is the Universe, some say it is the adding up of all existent matter and all the space in which all events occur, the term Visible Universe is often used to describe what part of the Universe that can be seen or observed by humanity whilst dictionaries describe it as the whole of all existing matter, energy and space , the World, so it all seems much the same, to make matters even harder to understand some scientists say that the Universe may be part of a system of many other Universes known as a Multiverse, but I am not going anywhere near that one.

So how big is the Universe? and that is what astronomers have wondered over for years, it is now thought the Universe is at least 156 BILLION LIGHT YEARS WIDE. This is the result of a recent survey which I have seen just bits of stating that the experiment examined radiation imprinted on the Cosmos or Universe which was created about 380,000 years after the Big Bang which is accepted by most as how the Universe was born 13.7 billion years ago, quite honestly does anyone know exactly, I do not think so, it is far too vast for the technology available, even astrologers and scientists say there are many, many things they do not know or yet fully understand, plus the fact that the Universe is still expanding rapidly every single minute. There are also other arguments that the Universe is similar to a hall of mirrors and is therefore not as huge as it appears, but it seems that argument has been somewhat disproved by this experiment.

How many galaxies are there exactly? this is a hard question to find the answer to, in 1999 after results from the Hubble telescope were examined it was then thought there were 125 billion Galaxies, but after recent research with the Hubble Deep field which just examines small portions at a time which is said to be 0.04 degrees wide so would need 27 million of these images to arrive at a total it was then estimated at 240 billion, once again does anyone really know I even saw one estimate of 700 billion, now that is a massive difference, there are huge differences as well between the Universe and the Visible Universe, I think much more time is needed to find that answer.

More is known about closer Galaxies and the various types, the closest giant neighbour to us is the Andromeda Galaxy which is also a Spiral galaxy and is about 2 to 3 million light years away. Apart from Spiral galaxies which have already been dealt with there are three other main types of galaxy which are Lenticular, Elliptical and Irregular. A brief description of each is a Lenticular is very similar to a Spiral but without the spiral structure like a smooth disk where formation finished long ago because all the stellar matter was used. Elliptical Galaxies are shaped as their name implies and consist of very old stars and usually these galaxies contain very little or no stellar matter. Irregular are also as they sound as they have been distorted by the gravitation of neighbouring galaxies.

When we stare at stars in the sky we are in fact looking back in time, if you know a particular star position and it is for instance 7 light years away then you are looking at that star as it was seven years ago and not as it may be now because that is how long that light has taken to cross part of the Universe to reach Earth. Whilst researching this subject we found a lot more questions than answers and there is one question we will leave with you and that is WHAT LIES BEYOND OUR UNIVERSE?????? AND BEYOND AND BEYOND ????????????????????????????????