Misconceptions plague society, including those relating to scientific areas such as astronomy. But just how common are astronomy misconceptions? We collected data from 358 people around the world to find out!

A few disclaimers before we get into the data. This is by no means a perfect scientific study. Although we tried to reach as many people as possible, the gender ratio was about 2:1 (two-thirds male and only one-third female), one-third of the respondents were from the United States, and 60% of the respondents classed themselves as having a higher than average interest in astronomy. This could either mean that people are more interested in space than we initially expected, or it more likely means that the majority of our respondents were slightly more on the intellectual side since many of our respondents came from survey exchange platforms, online creative communities, and educational content channels. Regardless, the data is still very interesting, even if it does not perfectly represent society as a whole. Now on to the data!

Quick Facts

• More than 1 in 3 people don't understand how Earth's seasons work
• 1 in 3 people think there is no gravity in space
• 1 in 6 people think Saturn is the only planet in the Solar System with rings
• 1 in 11 people think "shooting stars" are literal stars shooting across the sky
• 1 in 13 people think the Sun is the largest star in the entire Universe
• 1 in 21 people think "the Milky Way" is the same thing as "the Universe"
• 1 in 3 people believe 25% of astronomy misconceptions
• 1 in 7 people are unsure about 25% of astronomy misconceptions
• Men tend to be more interested and know more about space than women
• The general populace of India have a widespread interest in space, yet don't know much about astronomy
• PhD's average less astronomy knowledge than primary/elementary students
• People who have only completed secondary education (high school) tend to know the most about astronomy
• Primary/elementary students have more interest in space than any other education level

The Most Common Astronomy Misconceptions

Participants were asked 30 true-or-false questions with the additional option of "I don't know". All the questions were in relation to supposed common misconceptions about space. In all the graphs and statistics in this article, we class correct answers as "space knowledge", incorrect answers as "belief in space misconceptions" or "mistaken by space misconceptions", and "I don't know" answers as "unsurety of space misconceptions."

There are many alarming statistics here. Possibly the most alarming result is that at least 1 in 3 people are incorrect in how they think Earth's seasons work. Also a bit alarming is that 1 in 3 people also think there is no gravity in space... not sure how they think orbiting works. It's also very surprising that 36% of people still believe that there is a permanently dark side of the Moon.

Space Knowledge, Misconceptions, and Interest by Demographics

Some of the most interesting statistics are looking at results by various demographics (age, gender, country, etc.).

From the data above, it appears that males tend to know more about space and astronomy, but also tend to be more confidently wrong than females. However, males also tend to have higher interest in astronomy, which is likely the reason for having more knowledge about it.
Perhaps the most surprising is that age doesn't seem to have a huge affect on space knowledge or belief in misconceptions (within reason).

Each survey participant was asked to give a rating from 1-5 on how interested they were in space/astronomy. 1 being very uninterested and 5 being very interested.

These results are about as expected, more interest in space usually equals more knowledge about space. Although, it is interesting to note that males with a space interest level of 4 actually believed fewer misconceptions than males with a space interest level of 5, though the difference is negligable.

Participants were also asked which country they currently lived in (this will differ slightly from country of origin). For obvious reasons, results from countries with very few respondents would not be accurate, so countries with fewer than 5 respondents are grouped into "others".

These results aren't exceptionally interesting until we bring in that last graph.
Surprisingly, despite India being the 3rd most interested country (in the realm of astronomy), it has the lowest amount of space knowledge as well as being the most mistaken by space misconceptions.
Norway has the least (and below average) interest in astronomy, yet scored about average on all accounts. Poland also scored exceptionally well despite being the 4th least interested country on the topic of astronomy.

It's not too surprising that the demographic with only a standard secondary education (high school) came out on top as most of the additional degrees are likely not related to astronomy (though this doesn't seem to have decreased their interest in astronomy very much). Although, it is a little concerning that those with the highest degrees (PhD/doctoral degree) were by far the most mistaken, believing nearly one-third of space misconceptions.

If you want to do your own research into this topic, feel free to use the full dataset of answers. Both the CSV and JS downloads are completely free.

Space Misconceptions Survey.csv
Space Misconceptions Survey.js