We all know astronomy is cool, Astronomy magazine writes in its March issue the 500th since the magazine was launched in August 1973. To demonstrate and celebrate, the magazine compiled a wide-ranging, colorfully illustrated list of 500 facts ranging over every aspect of the cosmos and how we perceive it. Heres a sampling:

1. Exactly 88 constellations cover the sky, with no gaps and no overlaps.

2. The solar systems largest moon, Ganymede,which orbits Jupiter, contains 25 percent more volume than Mercury.

10. The most luminous star visible to the naked eye, 34 Cygni, outshines the sun by 610,000 times.

22. If you drilled a tunnel through Earth and jumped in, you would reach the other side in 42 minutes and 12 seconds, and your top speed would be 17,670 mph.

44. As your eyes adapt to darkness, their sensitivity increases 10,000-fold in the first 30 minutes, with little gain after that.

71. The odds are greater than 7-to-1 that on your birthday, the sun was not in what you think is your zodiacal constellation.

107. The 60-ton Hoba iron meteorite in Namibia is the worlds largest intact meteorite.

198. Of the 12 traditional constellations of the zodiac, Capricorn is the smallest.

251. When the universe was 14 million years old, its background temperature was 80 degrees Fahrenheit, about the same as a summer day on Earth.

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Everything you wanted to know about the stars and more, from Astronomy magazine