href=”http://didyouknow.org/feathers-per-square-inch/” rel=”nofollow” class=”exlnk” target=”_blank” title=”Feathers per square inch”>Feathers per square inch
A swan has up to 25,000 feathers but a hummingbird has the fewest feathers of all birds – only about 1,000 feathers. But being so small, it has more feathers per square inch than most other birds.
A hummingbird beats its wings up to 80 times per second, flying at speeds up to 35 mph (56km/h). Its heart beats more than 1200 times per minute. Which means it needs a lot of food and liquid for energy. It eats up to half its own weight and drinks 8 times its weight in water each day. Its long tubular tongue licks nectar at 13 times a second.
The hummingbird is one of the smallest bird species and the only one that is known to be able to fly backwards.
The size of the sun in comparison
It is the fire of life. It can be kind but it can get angry. But it never throws its weight around. It is the sun. And although it is 330,000 more massive than earth and contains 99.8% of the mass in our solar system, it is small in comparison with some other stars.
The sun never cease to amaze us with its theatrics, its lava flares dancing across its surface in a ballet of nuclear fusion, sometimes leaping millions of miles into the air. And although the sun is big, its intense heat and light makes it difficult to capture good images with normal instruments. So NASA scientists use an Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager and an Atmospheric Imaging Assembly detector to view the ultra-violet (UV) and extreme ultra-violet lithography (EUV) wavelengths released by the sun. The resulting images are spectacular.
Full disk image of the sun. Ain’t it beautiful?!