Learn a little about space: Crossword puzzle

I've recently come across a website where I could create word cross-puzzles, and I thought it would be an engaging way to learn about new things.

One of the things that has always held a particular fascination with me is space. The vastness of space is mind-blowing.

I know most of us don't really think about space very often, and I believe that is because we get caught up in our own lives here on Earth. Despite how insignificant Earth is compared to the rest of the universe, our lives on this planet can feel all-consuming most days. From work to family lives, the day can get hectic and before we know it, night is upon us.

If we stop and look at the sky above us (hopefully outside the city where there is no light pollution), we can see magnificent celestial bodies floating in endless space. We can literally see the numerous stars of the Milky Way galaxy swimming around us.

Imagine this: Voyager 1, which is the furthest manmade object from Earth, was a probe that was launched in 1977 to learn about Saturn and Jupiter. After NASA got the information it needed from the two planets, they let the probe continue travelling further. Eventually, in 2012 (35 years after launching) Voyager 1 finally exited our solar system and entered interstellar space. A probe travelling 38,200 miles per hour took 35 years to leave our solar system (minus any time it took around Saturn and Jupiter). This should give you some understanding of the scale of our solar system... can you imagine how massive the galaxy is? the universe?

Our sun is the star that our solar system, and our lives, revolve around. It is just a single star among approximately 100 billion in the Milky Way galaxy. The Milky Way galaxy is estimated to be 100 thousand light years in diameter. This means that it would take light a hundred thousand years to go from one end of the Milky Way to the other. Just for your information, light is considered the fastest thing in existence, travelling at 300 million m/s (or 186,000 miles per second). This gives you a glimpse at the scale of the galaxy we live in.

What if I tell you that it is estimated to be between 200 billion to 2 trillion galaxies in the universe? And to add to that, the Milky Way is only considered a medium-sized galaxy. There are large galaxies with up to 100 trillion stars!

Like I said earlier, the scale of the universe is mind-blowing.

For me, looking at the stars can be very relaxing. It makes me realise that the troubles I'm facing are ultimately very small. Of course, I can't ignore my issues, but this helps me keep calm and set priorities.

I'm not a scientist and don't think I have the desire to be one. I do, however, like to learn about certain concepts of physics, astrophysics, psychology and other sciences, simply because they are interesting. I have even written many articles surrounding such concepts before.

In the hopes of dragging people to learn about space and hopefully seeing how amazing it is, I created this simple crossword to introduce some basic knowledge about space. Most of you would have probably heard of most of what is in the puzzle, but it is nice to test our knowledge every now and then.

In the future, I might create more puzzles specific to particular subjects and accompany them with relevant articles. This way I will expand my knowledge, and hopefully ignite some curiosity in others.

I tried to embed the crossword in this article but it doesn't look like Vocal allows that, so I linked it below. Hope you enjoy it.