March 22, 2020
By: Haris Ahmad[1]
As I have explained in many of my blogs, the universe is a huge place that is literally never-ending. Not only is this so big, but it is also expanding at ever-increasing rates. It has numerous types of celestial bodies in it and so, in this blog, I will highlight some of the main types of celestial bodies in the universe in an order of how big is it.
The first and smallest celestial body in the universe is an asteroid. These things exist in the number of millions in many solar systems. The question that would pop into your mind is how did these objects form? Well, in our star system, these objects were formed in the early solar system and are the remains of the violent events of the early solar systems such as the collision of planets.
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| Image Source: https://www.newsweek.com/giant-asteroid-world-tallest-building-sail-earth-1487404 |
A strange fact is that more than 150 asteroids have been known to have moons. In our star system, these asteroids exist in the asteroid belt and Kuiper belt. I have explained in detail about these celestial bodies in one of my previous blogs.
The second celestial body that I'll highlight is a moon. A moon is the natural satellite of any planet. Our planet Earth also has a moon named Luna.
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| Image Source: https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/moons/earths-moon/overview/ |
Our moon formed due to the collision of a Mars-sized planet named "Theia" with Earth. The highest number of moons a planet in our star system has is 79 moons, which orbit Jupiter.
The third celestial body on my list is a planet. Most of you may know about what they are right? Due to the fact that we are living on the one right now.
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| Image Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCDVN7DCzYE |
Planets are celestial bodies that orbit a star in an elliptical orbit. In our star system, there are 8 planets. There are even planets that orbit no star at all. These planets are rogue planets who travel alone in this cold vacuum. I have explained one in one of my previous blogs.
The next celestial body that I'll explain is a star. Stars are huge glowing balls of gas mainly composed of hydrogen and helium. These stars make energy through Thermo-nuclear fusion (a very complex topic to talk about). Our star is the Sun which all of the 8 planets, millions of asteroids and many dwarf planets orbit.
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| Image Source: https://www.universetoday.com/16338/the-sun/ |
The largest known star in our whole universe is UY Scuti in front of which our star seems nothing at all.
The next celestial body I'll talk about is one of the biggest in our whole universe. It is known as a galaxy. These celestial bodies contain millions or even billions of stars and gases held together due to a strong gravitational attraction from probably, a supermassive central black hole in the center of it. Our galaxy named Milky Way alone has billions of stars even though it is not one of the biggest in the universe.
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Image Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5AdrupH788 |
The supermassive central black hole in our galaxy is named Sagittarius A*. This black hole is literally too big. The biggest known galaxy to us is IC 1101.
I did not explain in detail the celestial bodies because I just wanted to give an overview of the types of celestial bodies from the smallest to biggest.
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