Facts
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Mercury: Mercury is just a little bit larger than Earth's moon. The surface of Mercury that faces the Sun can reach about 800 degrees Fahrenheit. On the other hand, the temperature on the nighttime side can plummet to almost -300 degrees Fahrenheit. This is because Mercury has little to no atmosphere to help regulate temperature. Mercury's orbit is not a perfect circle like most of the other planets. It's actually egg-shaped. At times, Mercury's orbit brings it closer to the Sun than other times, while all the other planets that have circular orbits are always the same distance from the Sun.
Venus: The Earth has a protective layer known as the Ozone Layer. This important shield protects the Earth from the Sun's ultraviolet radiation. Venus does not have an ozone layer. As a result, the ultraviolet radiation from the Sun finds its way directly into Venus' atmosphere. Over many billions of years this radiation has slowly broken down water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen. As a result, there is today very little water left on Venus. Venus is so close to the Earth, it appears as the brightest planet in the night Sky.
Earth: The Earth is the biggest of all the terrestrial planets. A terrestrial planet is a dense planet found in the inner Solar System. The diameter of Earth is 7,926 miles. The circumference measured around the equator is 24,901 miles. There are currently almost 7 billion people living on the Earth. About 30% of the Earth's surface is covered with land, while about 70% is covered by oceans.
Mars: Mars has both North and South polar ice caps, much like Earth. Also like Earth, both ice caps are made mostly of frozen water. Mars is not much farther from the Sun than Earth. As a result, a typical year on Mars is 1 year and 320 days. While a year on Mars might be almost twice as long as a year on Earth, the length of a day there is almost identical. The Red Planet, as Mars is often called, is the fourth planet from the sun. In a lot of ways, Mars looks a lot like our home, though instead of blue oceans and green land, Mars is home to an ever present red tint. Mars and Earth are similar in so many ways that it’s almost hard to believe we haven’t found anything alive there.
Jupiter: Jupiter is the largest planet in our Solar System. Ancient Astronomers named Jupiter after the king of the Roman Gods. Jupiter is the 5th closest planet to our sun. The atmosphere of Jupiter consists of about 84 percent Hydrogen and about 15 percent helium, with small amounts of acetylene, ammonia, ethane, methane, phosphine, and water vapor.
Saturn: Saturn is the sixth planet in the Solar system and, when seen through a telescope, by far the most beautiful.
Neptune: Neptune cannot be seen without a large telescope and was first seen in 1846 from the observatory in Berlin.
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Venus: The Earth has a protective layer known as the Ozone Layer. This important shield protects the Earth from the Sun's ultraviolet radiation. Venus does not have an ozone layer. As a result, the ultraviolet radiation from the Sun finds its way directly into Venus' atmosphere. Over many billions of years this radiation has slowly broken down water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen. As a result, there is today very little water left on Venus. Venus is so close to the Earth, it appears as the brightest planet in the night Sky.
Earth: The Earth is the biggest of all the terrestrial planets. A terrestrial planet is a dense planet found in the inner Solar System. The diameter of Earth is 7,926 miles. The circumference measured around the equator is 24,901 miles. There are currently almost 7 billion people living on the Earth. About 30% of the Earth's surface is covered with land, while about 70% is covered by oceans.
Mars: Mars has both North and South polar ice caps, much like Earth. Also like Earth, both ice caps are made mostly of frozen water. Mars is not much farther from the Sun than Earth. As a result, a typical year on Mars is 1 year and 320 days. While a year on Mars might be almost twice as long as a year on Earth, the length of a day there is almost identical. The Red Planet, as Mars is often called, is the fourth planet from the sun. In a lot of ways, Mars looks a lot like our home, though instead of blue oceans and green land, Mars is home to an ever present red tint. Mars and Earth are similar in so many ways that it’s almost hard to believe we haven’t found anything alive there.
Jupiter: Jupiter is the largest planet in our Solar System. Ancient Astronomers named Jupiter after the king of the Roman Gods. Jupiter is the 5th closest planet to our sun. The atmosphere of Jupiter consists of about 84 percent Hydrogen and about 15 percent helium, with small amounts of acetylene, ammonia, ethane, methane, phosphine, and water vapor.
Saturn: Saturn is the sixth planet in the Solar system and, when seen through a telescope, by far the most beautiful.
- Saturn is the last planet that can be seen without using a telescope or binoculars and the planet was known in the ancient world before telescopes were invented.
- Saturn has at least 18 moons , satellites which orbit round the planet attracted to it by the planet’s gravity.
- Saturn itself is named, like all the planets, after a Roman God. Saturn was a rather mysterious God but it is believed that he was the God of sowing seed and of the harvest.
- Saturn is 886 million miles, or 1426 million kilometres, from the Sun.
- Distances from the Sun are measured in Astronomical Units (AU). The Earth is the standard unit, and is one AU from the Sun, so an AU equals 150 million kilometres (93 million miles), the distance of the Earth from the Sun. Saturn is 9.5 AU from the Sun.
- Saturn takes 29½ years to make one complete orbit of the Sun. The Earth takes one year.
- Uranus: Uranus cannot be seen from the Earth without a telescope.
- The seventh planet from the Sun, it was not known in ancient times, unlike the planets from Mercury to Saturn.
- William Herschel was born in Hanover, Germany. He moved to England in 1757 in order to follow a career as a musician but after buying a book on astronomy he became interested only in watching the sky.
- Most of the centre of Uranus is a frozen mass of ammonia and methane, which gives it the blue-green colour. The atmosphere also contains hydrogen and helium.
- Because Uranus is lying on its side as it orbits the sun, for nearly a quarter of its orbit one pole of the planet is in complete darkness.
- Uranus was the ancient Greek God of the heavens whose sons were the Giants and Titans.
- Uranus is the smallest of the four “giants”, but is still several times larger than the Earth. It has a diameter of 29297 miles, or 47, 150 kilometres, compared to the Earth’s diameter of just under 8000 miles, or 12,760 kilometres.
Neptune: Neptune cannot be seen without a large telescope and was first seen in 1846 from the observatory in Berlin.
- BUT, the existence of Neptune had actually been “discovered” a year earlier, in 1845.
- The Berlin observatory, following Le Verrier’s calculations giving the possible position of this object, searched for Neptune and found the planet. They named it Neptune after the roman god of sea.
- Neptune has a diameter of 29,297 miles, or 47,150 kilometres. The Earth has a diameter of 7928 miles (12,760 kilometres).
- Neptune is one of the four “gas giants”. Like Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus, it is composed only of gas. Neptune is a great ball of hydrogen and helium.
- In 2011 Neptune completed the first orbit of the Sun since its discovery 165 years before in 1846.
- Neptune is 30.1 Astronomical Units from the Sun, a staggering 2793 million miles (4495 million kilometres) from the Sun, and 2700 million miles from the Earth.
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