School is back in session, or about to be. And you or your child might be soon hearing the words, “And what did you learn over the summer?”

That Jennifer wants Brad back? Yawn. That gas prices soared. Boring! You need something smart and astronomical to fill this order. Never fear! Here are some quick trivia to impress both teacher and fellow students alike. Read them, know them, and go back to school mentally dressed to impressed! Here goes…

1. You learned that the big star-like object now in the western skies after sunset is Jupiter and it’s bigger than you ever imagined!

Jupiter, the 5th planet out, is so monstrous that it outweighs all the other planets combined! One can mix together all the planets, Mercury to Pluto, and still couldn’t make anything as massive as that Big Guy out there. And yet to see it, that bright lone dot in the sky, gives one an idea of how vast space really is. Our solar system, although huge, is vacuous beyond words. You might say it is nothing more than space, interrupted now and then by a seemingly random rock.

2. You learned that there is a vast reservoir of planet-like things out beyond Pluto!

Most of us learn of the nine planets, and their order, but very few of us are aware that beyond the common planets lies a dispersed collection of crud that extends for billions of miles still. Here are thousands of icy bodies in a donut-like area called the Kuiper Belt. It is here that astronomers working at Palomar have found icy bodies considerably bigger than Pluto! Will they be deemed planets, as well? Or will they keep their present non-poetic names of Kuiper Belt Objects? Will Pluto itself be downgraded to a mere Kuiper Belt Object? Stay tuned, the next year should be a telling time in the planetary sciences.

3. You learned that Mars is rising earlier and earlier in the evening, readying itself for a close approach in October.

As we pass Mars on our inside lane round the sun we will come closer to it, to be sure. It will get brighter and brighter in the night sky, it’s bright pinkish color setting it apart from the background stars. But unlike the internet stories being forwarded all over, the Red Planet will not be as bright and big as the full Moon! Nor will it pass so close that we can see the ice caps and dust storms with the naked eye. We’ll still need a scope to see those – sorry!

4. The whole classroom, the students, the books, the backpacks – even the teacher! – are made of atoms forged in the furnaces of giant stars that lived and died before our sun was even a thought in its parents’ minds.

You may recall from previous columns here that the great giant stars live and die a wild and crazy life. Their immense mass, sometimes a hundred times that of our own star, have such intense gravity that their innards get squished something frightful.

It’s OK! This pressing causes a process called fusion. Fusion “fuses” little hydrogen and helium and carbon atoms into bigger atoms. Fusion lights the great flaming plasma and pushes the gases back against gravity into a bright sphere that we see as a “star.”

But the big stars can only fuse to iron. Once iron is formed the process stops producing energy to balance the mighty crush of gravity. Gravity doesn’t care; it continues to push down anyway. In a complicated set of steps the star’s core collapses and explodes violently.

The violence is so intense that the atoms already there are fused further into essentially the entire Periodic Table, and thrown out into space.

Future star systems collect this debris into new stars and planets.

So, not only is our planet proper made of stardust, so is everything in it. That would include you and your backpack and the classroom hamster, Larry.

There! That should impress the teachers for a while. But don’t stop there! Go and discover more throughout the year, filling yourself not just with knowledge, but with understanding and appreciation for this marvelous universe we’ve been given.

Have a great school year!