Greatest Rivers

The volume of water flowing from the mouth of a river varies according to the season. The figures given are highest averages. The outflow of the Amazon would fill almost two million baths every second.

• Amazon flows into the South Atlantic, Brazil at 219,000 m3/sec .
• Ganges flows into the Bay of Bengal, Bangladesh at 43,900 m3/sec .
• Zaire(Congo) flows into the South Atlantic ,Angola/Congo  at 41,800 m3/sec .
• Chang Jiang flows into the Yellow Sea , China at 31,900 m3/sec .
• Orinoco flows into the South Atlantic , Venezuela at 31,900 m3/sec .
• Plate-Parana-Grande flows into the South Atlantic , Uruguay at 25,700 m3/sec .

Source - Whitaker's world of facts
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Greatest Rivers

Largest Deserts

Deserts cover about a third of the world's land area . They range from extremely arid and barren sandy deserts (about 4% of the total land surface of the globe) , through arid (15 per cent) to semi-arid (15 per cent).

Most deserts have features of all these , with one zone merging into the next.so the start and finish of the deserts are broken down by geographers into small desert regions - the Australian desert includes the the Gibson, Great Sandy , Great Victoria and Simpson.

Sahara , Northern Africa - 9,100,000 sq. km
Australian , Australia( includes Gibson , Great sandy ,Great Victoria and Simpson) - 3,400,000 sq. km
Arabian Peninsula, Southwest Asia ( includes an-Nafud and Rub al Khali ) - 2,600,000 sq. km
Turkestan, Central Asia (includes Kara-kum and Kyzylkum) - 1,900,000 sq. km
Gobi , Central Asia - 1,300,000 sq. km
North Anerican Desert , US/Mexico (includes Great Basin, Mojave ,Sonorah and Chihuahuan) - 1,300,000 sq. km

Largest Deserts

Longest river

The source of the Nile was discovered by Europeans in 1858 when British explorer John Hanning Speke reached Lake Victoria Nyanza, in what is now called Burundi.About one hundred years later, in 1953, the source of the Amazon was identified as a stream called Huarco flowing from the Misuie glacier in the Peruvian Andes mountains.

By following the Amazon from its source and up the Rio Para, it is possible to sail for 6,750 km , which is slightly more than the length of the Nile.But geographers do not consider the entire route to be part of the Amazon basin, so Nile is considered the world's longest river.

Nile flows from through Burundi , Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia , Kenya, Rwanda,Sudan,Tanzania, Uganda - 6,695 km.
Amazom flows through Peru and Brazil - 6,448 km.
Chang Jiang  flows through China - 6,378 km.
Huang He flows through China -5,464 km.
Amur flows through China and Russia - 4415 km .

In 2006 the British and New Zealand Ascend the Nile team sailed from the mouth to the source of the river. Using Global Positioning , they measured their journey and came up with a total length 107 km longer than the official figure.

Source : Whitaker's world of facts

Longest river

Manned space missions

During the 1950s, there was a "space rate" between the USA and USSR to be the first country to send a human into space. NASA's Mercury missions were originally unmanned, or carried only animals.The USSR launched the first man into orbit in 1961.

Each country's subsequent space missions had different aims . The USA focused on Moon landings with their Apollo programme and later the re-usable space shuttle . The Soviets and later Russia concentrated on  long duration missions , with the Mir space station.The latest manned mission is the International Space Station, which is four times larger than Mir.

Mission                              Country                                Years
Mercury                             USA                                     1959-63
Vostok                               USSR                                   1961-63
Voskhod                            USSR                                   1964-65
Gemini                               USA                                      1965-66
Apollo                               USA                                      1967-72
Soyuz                                USSR                                    1967-76
Salyut                                USSR                                    1971-82
Skylab                               USA                                      1973
Apollo Soyuz                     USA/USSR                           1975
Space shuttle                      USA                                     1981
Mir space station                USSR/Russia                         1986-2001
International space             USA,Canada,Japan,               1998-
station                               European Space Agency,
                                         Russia,Brazil
Shenzhou                          China                                       2003-2012

Manned space missions

Longest Glaciers

During the last Ice age, more than 30 percent of the Earth's surface was covered by glaciers- frozen rivers of ice that move very slowly . Today as much as 10 per cent is covered with glaciers.

The Lambert-Fisher Glacier is the longest in the world and was discovered in 1956.The longest glacier in North America is the Hubbard Glacier,Alaska,which measures 146 km .The longest in Europe is the Aletsch Glacier,Switzerland, at 35 km .

• Lambert-Fisher , Antarctica - 515 km
• Novaya Zemlya , Russia - 418 km
• Arctic Institute , Antarctica - 362 km
• Nimrod-Lennox-King , Antarctica - 290 km
• Denman , Antarctica - 241 km

Glaciers hold about 75 percent

of the world's fresh water . If all

the glaciers melted , the world's 

sea level would rise about 70m

Longest Glaciers

Artificial Satellites

The USSR's Sputnik 1 was the first artificial satellite to enter Earth's orbit.This 83.6 kg metal sphere transmitted signals back to Earth for three weeks before its batteries failed.
In 1958 the USA began to launch its satellites.Five went into orbit.All of the earliest satellites have since crashed back to Earth,except Vanguard 1 (USA ,1958) which is still in space and likely to remain so for another 200 years.

Over the past 50 years,many more artificial satellites have been launched, with a greater range of uses.

Astronomy - The Hubble Space Telescope has been taking photographs of distant galaxies since 1990.

Communications -  Over 5000 satellites have been launched to transmit telephone,radio and television signals around the world . Fewer than half are still orbiting and many have stopped working.

Earth observatory satellites - These transmit images of the weather and the Earth's environment.They helped to show the depletion of ozone layer.

Global positioning system - This is the system of 24 linked satellites that allows people to pinpoint their exact position anywhere on earth. The system is operated by the US Department of Defense and is used by aircraft and ships GPS systems are now common in cars too.

Military satellites -  Governments use these 'spies in the sky' for surveillance but their precise functions are secrets.

Sources : Whitaker's world of facts

Artificial Satellites

Animal space pioneers

Before humans went into space animals were used to test equipment.The first animal to be sent up in a rocket- but not into space - was Albert 1 , a male rhesus monkey in 1948.He and his successor, Albert 2 , died during the tests.
However, on 20 september 1951, a monkey and 11 mice were recovered after a launch in a US Aerobee rocket. Many further animal experiments were carried out before the first manned space flight.

Space dogs and a cat - Laila, a female Samoyed husky , became the first animal in orbit after being launched by the USSR in Sputnik 2 November 1957. There was no way to bring her down and she died after ten days in space. Two female huskies, Belka and Strelka, orbited successfully in August 1960. Strelka later gave birth to puppies, one of which was given to US President John F. Kennedy. In October 1963, a French Veronique AGI rocket put a cat called Felix into space and returned him safely to Earth by parachute.

Monkey business - Able, a female rhesus monkey, and Baker, a female squirrel monkey , were launched by the USA in May 1959. They did not orbit and successfully returned to Earth .In November 1961 Enos, a male chimpanzee completed two orbits and survived . The USSR first space primates were monkeys Abrek and Bion , who orbited in December 1983 in one of a series of Bion satellite experiments.

Flying frogs - In 1970, the USA's Orbiting Frog Otolith satellite (OFO-A) launched two bulfrogs into orbit for a week. In december 1990,Toyohiro Akiyama, a Japanese journalist , took six green tree frogs to the weightlessness experiments.

Animal space pioneers

Asteroid facts

Asteroids are often called minor planets.They are lumps of rocks orbiting the Sun , mostly in the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.

Ceres was once considered the largest asteroid but later it has been reclassified as a dwarf planet . It is 936 km in diameter and was found on New Year's Day ,1801. Since then thousands of asteroids have been found.Twelve of them are more than 250 km wide and 26 are larger than 200 km in diameter. As telescopes have improved , more and more small asteroids have been detected. There are probably about 100,000 asteroids larger than 1 km in diameter.

Vesta, the fourth asteroid to be found (in 1807), is the only one bright enough to be seen without a telescope.

Toutatis was discovered in 1989. It is named after the Celtic god Toutatis , whose name is used as an oath by the comic strip character Asterix the Gaul. Toutatis measures 4.6 by 2.4 by 1.9 km. It passes earth every four years and is one of the largest space objects to come so close to us.

Sources : Whitaker's world of facts

Asteroid facts

Sun Facts

The Sun is 149,597,893 km from earth and has a diameter of 1,391,940 km.This is more than 100 times larger than earth. Its mass is equivalent to 99.98 percent of mass of the entire Solar System.

Elements - The Sun is mostly made up of two light gases,75 percent hydrogen and 23 percent helium, with relatively small quantities of other elements- including metals such as gold. Helium was discovered in the Sun before it was detected on earth. Its name comes from helios, the Greek word for sun.

Temperature - The sun has a surface temperature of 5,880 K but it can be 56,000,000 K at its core.(K means Kelvin). At the Sun's center,nuclear fusion constantly changes hydrogen into helium , and  the energy and heat released from this process rise to the surface . The yellow surface we see is called the photosphere.

The corona - The outermost layer of the Sun extends millions of kilometers into space but is visible only during eclipses.At a height of 75,000 km in the corona, the temperature may reach 2,000,000 K.

Rotation - The Sun rotates once every 25.4 days , but because it is not solid , the poles spin at a different rate,taking as much as 36 days to complete a single revolution.

Solar eclipse - When the Moon is between Earth and the Sun , it blocks out the light causing a partial or total eclipse .

Sources : Whitaker's world of facts

Sun Facts

Constellations

Group of stars form patterns in the night sky, which are called constellations. There are 88 known constellations. The Sumerians,a Middle Eastern civilization,probably named them about 5000 years ago.

The largest is Hydra ,the sea serpent, and the smallest is Crux Australis, the Southern Cross. Centaurus, the Centaur has the most stars that can be seen with the naked eye.Others include Aquila, the Eagle; Canis Major, the Great Dog; and Orion, the Hunter .

Constellations

Galaxy facts

Galaxies are the group of billions of stars held together by the force of gravity.Most are either spiral or elliptical,but some are irregular in shape.

The Milky way
This is the best known galaxy.The word galaxy comes from the Greek for milk.Before telescopes were powerful enough to prove that they were made up of individual stars,galaxies look like milky or cloudy areas in the sky .Our solar system is only one of 100-200 billion stars in the Milky way,which is 100,000 light years in diameter.The Sun and all the planets take about 200,000,000 years to complete one orbit around its center.

Brightest- The large Magellanic Cloud which is visible only in the southern hemisphere is 170,000 light years from earth and 39,000 light years in diameter.

Largest- The central galaxy of the Abel 2029 galaxy cluster was discovered in 1990.It is 1070 million light years distant and has a diameter of 5.6 million light years,80 times the diameter of our own galaxy.It has a total light output equivalent to 2 trillion times that of the Sun.

Nearest - Discovered in 1993, the Canis Major Dwarf galaxy is approximately 25,000 light years from the solar systems.

Sources:  Whitakers's world of facts 

Galaxy facts

Star facts

Star appear to twinkle because we see them through the layers of the Earth's atmosphere. Light is distorted as it passes through these layers, so that the amount we see changes constantly. Stars nearest the horizon seem to twinkle the most because the light is passing through a greater depth of atmosphere.Stars do not twinkle when viewed from space, so telescopes in space , such as the Hubble , give the best possible view of distant stars and galaxies.

A star is a luminous body of gas , mostly hydrogen and helium.Stars generate light , which makes it possible for us to see them with a telescope or a naked eye.

Brightness - Not counting the Sun, the brightest star as seen from earth is Sirius, known as Dog star, in the constellation of Canis Major.It has a diameter of 149,598.020 km and is more than 24 times brighter than the sun.The star LBV 1806-20 in the constellation of Sagittarius may be 40 million times as bright as our sun but dust clouds make it almost invisible from earth.

Largest - The largest star is VY Canis Majoris , which has an estimated diameter of about 1950 times greater than the Sun.

Nearest - Proxima Centauri , discovered in 1915 is a 4.22 light years from earth. A spaceship moving at 40,000 km/hr - which is faster than any human has yet traveled in space - would take more than 114000 years to reach it.

Supernovae - These are vast explosions in which a whole star blows up . They are extremely bright rivaling for a few days the combined light output of all the stars in the galaxy.Supernova are rare - the last one in our galaxy was seen in 1604 by the German astronomer Johannes Kepler.

Quasers - These are extremely distant radio galaxies - galaxies giving out large amount of radio energy - and the brightest objects in the universe.Their radio emission is typically 1,000,000 to 100,000,000. times greater than the normal galaxy.

Black holes - A black hole is a star that has collapsed into itself.It has the surface gravity so powerful that nothing can escape from within it.

Star facts

First Expeditioners

Here I am sharing first expeditioners of world. I got this informations from my gk book.So i feel to share this piece of information with all.
The first person to reach the North pole by overland journey - Robert Peary
The first person  to reach the South Pole - Amundsen
The first person to have climbed Mount Everest - Sherpa Tenzing
The first person to sail round the world - Magellan
The first woman to conquer Mount Everest - Mrs. Junko Tabei
The first woman to have climbed Mount Everest twice - Nawang Gombu
The leader of the expedition 'Ocean to Sky' - Sir Edmund Hillary
The first two mountaineers who reached the summit of Everest without using oxygen - Peter Habeler          (Austrian) and Reinhold Messner (Italian)
The first person to reach North Pole by 7 dogs sledge - Naomi Uemura (Japanese)
The leader of the first Indian Antarctica Expedition - Z.A Kasim

First Expeditioners