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r/askastronomy

Ask Astronomy. For your astronomy-related questions and content! Founded 2012 · 183K members

181.6K members. The best post we have captured here reached 23.9K upvotes, which works out to 131 per 1,000 members.

131peak upvotes per 1,000 members
181.6Kmembers
23.9Kbest post
1.9Kmost comments
496posts we track

Open r/askastronomy on Reddit ↗

What actually lands here

The mix of post types among everything we have captured. Posting a link where almost nothing but images lands is wasted effort, and this is the fastest way to see it.

28% 23% 15% 13% 12% 10%
Image 28% Question 23% Text 15% Link 13% Gallery 12% Video 10%

The topics it labels

Flairs are the community's own categories, and the closest thing a subreddit has to telling you what it wants.

Astronomy 72 What did I see? 48 Planetary Science 23 Astrophysics 18 Black Holes 10 Sci-Fi 8 Cosmology 6

What the ceiling looks like

The biggest posts we have captured here. Links go to the original on Reddit.

What is this? Lasted about 5 mins

↑ 23.9K 💬 667 gallery 2025

Saw on a flight from korea to philippines on oct. 16 does amyone know name of what it is?

↑ 12.5K 💬 240 image 2024

This has been above my house for about 5 months. What is it?

↑ 11.3K 💬 775 gallery 2024

why does only one side have the large dark patches?

↑ 8.9K 💬 521 image 2026

Blackhole Speculation

↑ 8.6K 💬 598 image 2025

Did I accidently capture another galaxy?

↑ 8.2K 💬 243 image 2024

What are these blue stars in the middle?

↑ 7.4K 💬 255 image 2024

Anyone know what this is

↑ 7.1K 💬 839 gallery 2024

Silly video, but realistically, what would happen if the something this big took the sun.

↑ 4.7K 💬 1.4K video 2026

Is this a galaxy on the middle right?

↑ 4.6K 💬 130 gallery 2024

Communities its size

Within four times the member count either way, so the comparison is fair. Sorted by upside.

r/askastronomy, in numbers

Answered from the posts ViralHunt holds from this community, not from Reddit's own about page.

What is r/askastronomy?
r/askastronomy ("Ask Astronomy") describes itself this way: For your astronomy-related questions and content. It was founded in 2012 and has 183K members.
How many members does r/askastronomy have?
r/askastronomy has about 181.6K members. ViralHunt has tracked 496 of its posts; the biggest reached 23.9K upvotes, which is 131 per 1,000 members.
What is the most viral post on r/askastronomy?
"What is this? Lasted about 5 mins" reached 23.9K upvotes and 667 comments in 2025, the highest score among the posts we hold from r/askastronomy.
What subreddits are similar to r/askastronomy?
Communities of a comparable size we track: r/Leakednews, r/SpaceXBets, r/circled, r/International, r/Global_News_Hub, r/FBI.
What kind of posts do best on r/askastronomy?
Of the posts we hold, 28% are image posts and 23% are question posts.
When is the best time to post on r/askastronomy?
Across 496 timestamped posts we hold, the slots whose posts averaged the highest score are Friday at 14:00 UTC (4.2K avg upvotes), Monday at 20:00 UTC (4.1K avg upvotes), Thursday at 09:00 UTC (3K avg upvotes). The busiest day is Tuesday. For Reddit as a whole, see the best time to post on Reddit page.
How many upvotes does a post need to reach the top of r/askastronomy?
The 20th-best post we hold from r/askastronomy has 2.9K upvotes, so that is roughly the bar for the top twenty. We captured 17 posts from it in the last 30 days.

See what is climbing here before you write

ViralHunt tracks Reddit and eight other networks, records how every post grows, and puts what is taking off in front of your team in one list.

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Every figure here is what ViralHunt has captured from r/askastronomy, not everything the community has ever posted. We deliberately do not publish an average score: our sample is weighted toward a community's best posts, so an average would be flattering and wrong. Peak per 1,000 members is computed the same way for every community listed. See how we measure.