Cool Space Facts for Young Children

I thought it would be fun to ask Twitter what space fact they would tell kids aged 7. Today I spoke to a class of young children about the Solar System and managed to get a few of these into my hour.

I rather enjoyed the various responses and thought they might inspire more in turn. So here’s a collection of things astronomers would tell very young children. Feel free to tweet me @orbitingfrog with more!

“You can fit over 1,300 Earth sized things inside Jupiter but over 1,300,000 Earth sized things inside our Sun. Stuff is huge!” - Megan Whewell

“If you drove to the sun it would take 152 years.” - Alistair Gibbs

“That [space is] all a big nothing.” - Erik J Cox

“[There’s] more water on tiny Europa than there is on earth” - Ian in Brighton

“Io smells like rotten eggs because of the sulphur volcanoes. Stinkiest place in the Solar System?” - We Are All in the Gutter

“The giant planets have likely moved and Neptune and Uranus might have switched places.” - Meg Schwamb

“Tell them that dwarf planet Ceres was once a planet too & survived the downgrade to asteroid status.” - Richard Drumm

“You could float Saturn in the bath. If you had a Saturn-sized bath.” - Jim O’Donnell and John Hicks

“If the sun is a big beach ball, then the Earth is a small marble about a football field away” - Michael Nielsen

“[There’s] Red helium-neon rain on Jupiter and metallic snow/frost on Venus” - @blobrana

“The rain on [Saturn’s moon] Titan is flammable (but there’s no oxygen there so it never burns).” - James O’Brien

NOTE: I’ll add more as they are Tweeted