By: Hamad Al Baghli

8-4

Contents

• Solar System

• Our star, The Sun

• The nine planets

• Mercury

• Venus

• Earth

• Mars

• Jupiter

• Saturn

• Uranus

• Neptune

• Pluto

Contents

• Satellites• Comets • Asteroids• The Moon • Earth centered vs Sun centered• Sunspots• Prominences• Solar Flares• Bonus Questions

The Solar system

1. It consists of Planets, Stars, Comets and Asteroids.

2. First, Earth was thought to be the center of the solar system know as the Earth centered model

3. The sun centered model stated that the sun was the center and not the earth.

4. It has one sun and nine planets

5. The four inner planets Mercury, Earth, Venus, Mars.

6. The five outer planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto.

7. There are other objects like comets and asteroids and solar flares.

8. Our solar system is in A galaxy called the milky way.

The sun

• The Sun is 4.5 billion years old.

• It is often referred as the star at the center of our solar system.

• The Sun is 149,600,000 km away from earth (1 AU).

• There are 100 billion stars at our galaxy the Sun is just one of them.

• The Sun actually consists 25% Helium and 75% Hydrogen.

• It will probably stay at good form for about another 5 billion years before it doesn’t exist anymore.

• The light of the sun probably reaches the planet earth around 8 minutes late.

• The Sun is so hot that if it was a little bit hotter what we call today life would not exist

• The sun has the perfect distance, perfect size, perfect age, perfect temperature.

• The Sun orbits around the center of the milky way galaxy in the same way that the planets orbit taking 225,000,000 years to complete a full orbit traveling at 800,000 kilometers per hour.

The nine planets

Mercury• Mercury is the closest planet to the sun

• A year in Mercury is just 88 days long

• It is the smallest planet in our solar system

• Mercury is the second densest planet in our solar system behind the Earth

• Mercury is also known as the third hottest planet in our solar system.

• Mercury has the gravity of 88 percent of what earth has .

• Mercury’s diameter is about the fifth of the earth diameter, its 3,031 miles.

• It has a mass of 330,104,000,000 billion kg.

• Scientist concluded that mercury has a molten core.

• The Sun appear two and a half times bigger than it actually appears on earth.

Venus

• It is the second planet from the sun.

• It is also the second brightest object after of course the moon

• It is named after the Roman Goddess of love and beauty.

• the earths sister because of similar size and similar mass.

• Shockingly a day In Venus lasts longer than a year.

• The hottest planet in our solar system is Venus, It has a temperature of 426 Celsius.

• It has no moons.

• Venus doesn’t feature any type of water.

• It takes the Planet Venus 224 days to make a rotation around the sun.

• The mountains on Venus are higher than the our planet earth.

Earth

• It is the third planet from the sun .

• Earth’s age is 4.54 billion years.

• It is the largest terrestrial planet.

• It was once believed to be the center of the universe.

• It has a powerful magnetic field.

• Earth has the greatest density of all the planets in our solar system and its the only planet that has an atmosphere consist of 21 % oxygen.

• It is the the only planet that has liquid water on its surface.

• It is the only planet in the solar system that has life.

• Earth is the only inner planet to have one large Satellite(the Moon).

• It takes 365 days to orbit around the sun.

Mars

• Mars is the fourth planet from the sun

• It goes by the name “The Red Planet”.

• Got its name (the red planet) because of the reddish surface.

• It's atmosphere is composed of Carbon dioxide.

• 2 moons orbit around it.

• Mars has the tallest mountain in the solar system and it has the largest dust storms as well.

• It is 1.68 AU and the sun appears half the size it looks from earth.

• It takes 1.88 earth years to orbit around the sun.

• It has seasons just like earth does because of the close axis of rotation to earth.

• Channels indicate that water had been there on Mars once before.

Jupiter

• Jupiter is the larger planet in our solar system.

• Jupiter is 318 times bigger than earth's and a diameter that is 11 times longer.

• it has gravitational force more than our planet 26.4 times our gravity.

• The mass of Jupiter is 70% of the total mass of all other planets on the solar system.

• The orbital period of Jupiter is twelve earth years.

• The Great Red Spot is a three hundred years old storm on Jupiter.

• It has over 60 moons including the largest moon in the solar system which is even bigger than Mercury and Pluto.

• Jupiter also has a thin set of rings hardly visible from earth even with telescopes.

• Jupiter is the vacuum cleaner of the solar system for it sucks in comets, asteroids and meteoroids which could be of hazard for Earth.

• Due to atmospheric and magnetic drag particles in Jupiter’s rings probably don't stay there for long.

Saturn

• Saturn is the sixth planet from the sun.

• Saturn is named for the Roman god Saturnus.

• Saturn can be seen by the naked eye.

• The first one to observe with a telescope was Galileo in 1610.

• Saturn is the flattest planet in our solar system.

• It orbits around the sun one 29.4 earth years.

• Saturn is mostly made out of hydrogen.

• There are 150 moons in the planet Saturn.

• Only four space craft has ever visited the planet Saturn.

• It is also the least dense planet in the solar system.

Uranus

1. the seventh planet from the sun.

2. The planet Uranus is named after a Greek god called Uranus who ruled heaven.

3. It has a mass of 86,810,300,000,000 billion kg.

4. Uranus is the third largest planet in our Solar System.

5. Discovered in 1781 by Sir William Herschel.

6. It makes a trip around the sun every 84 years.

7. The coldest planet in the solar system is Uranus it has a minimum atmosphere temperature of -224 celcius.

8. There are two sets of rings in Uranus the rings are of very thin set of dark colored rings.

9. There is only one space craft who has flown by the planet Uranus.

10. The planet Uranus rotates on its side that why Uranus is different from the other planets.

Neptune

1. It is the 8th planet from the sun.

2. Neptune cannot be seen without a large telescope and it was first seen in 1846.

3. Neptune is also the fourth largest planet.

4. It is one of the four gas giants like Jupiter , Saturn, and Uranus.

5. . It is composed only of gas. It is a great of ball of hydrogen and helium.

6. It takes 165 earth years to orbit around the sun.

7. It has a very active climate and also a thin collection of rings.

8. Only one space craft has flown by Neptune back in 1989.

9. Neptune has the strongest winds in the solar system.

10. It was noticed that its orbit was not as it should be it didn’t obey Newton's laws.

Pluto

• Pluto was discovered in 1930.

• Pluto is also the second most massive dwarf planet.

• Pluto was named after a Greek god in the underworld.

• No space craft has ever visited the dwarf planet.

• Pluto is the planet with the lowest pull of gravity in the solar system.

• One of its moons is more than half the size of Pluto.

• A day on Pluto lasts for six Earth days and nine hours.

• It takes 243 and a half years to complete its orbit around the sun.

• Some astronomers believe that Pluto was once a moon of Neptune but it somehow escaped into its own orbit.

• There's a space craft in its way to Pluto right now.

Questions

What are galaxies ?

• Galaxies are huge collections of stars, dust and gas.

• They contain millions of stars and can range to hundreds of thousand s light years.

• Galaxies are divided into three basic types, spirals , elliptical and irregulars.

• Galaxies come in many different sizes, shapes and brightness and like stars are found alone, in pairs or in larger groups called clusters.

• We live in a galaxy called the milky way.

• In a spiral galaxy like ours the stars, gas and dust are organized

• Into a bulge , a disk containing spiral arms.

• Our galaxy is typical, it has hundreds of billions of stars and enough gas and dust to make billions more stars.

• It's all held together by gravity.

• the astronomers conclude that the centre of the milky way is a super massive black hole.

Astronomical unit

• Mercury is 0.387 Au away from the sun.

• Venus is 0.723,

• Earth is 1.00 (1 Astronomical Unit A.U.)

• Mars is 1.524

• Saturn is 9.529, and Uranus is 19.19 and finally, Neptune is 30.01 Au away from the sun.

• It takes us now 11 to 15 years to travel to Pluto.

• Space travel is getting faster so after 20 years from now.

• In the next 10 years, science fiction will have become science facts.

• Space ports are now beings built in a dozen different nations to accommodate this emerging multi billion industry.

What are Satellites

• A satellite is a moon, planet or machine that orbits a planet or star.

• Thousands of artificial or man made satellites orbit Earth some take pictures of other planets, the sun, black holes, dark matter or far away galaxies.

• Still other satellites are used mainly for communications, such as beaming TV signals and phone calls around the world.

• Satellites come in a lot of shapes and sizes.

• Satellites are increasingly getting important to the developing world.

• Most satellites are launched into space on rockets.

• A satellite orbits Earth when its speed is balanced by the pull of gravity without this balance.

• NASA sats help study Earth and space.

What are Comets

• Comets are mostly known as the most rare object in the night sky and among the most brilliant.

• They come from the outer realms of the solar system.

• Scientists refer that they look like dirty snowballs.

• Billions of years ago Comets were left over from the formations of stars and planets.

• The gravity form of all the stars and planets keeps the comet in motion and guides its path.

• Comets originate from the Kuiper belt and Oort Cloud the two regions in the solar system.

• Long Period comets are comets that takes hundreds of thousands of years to orbit the sun.

• Short period comets come from the Kuiper belt.

What are Asteroids

• Asteroids are referred as airless small rocks worlds that are revolving around the sun and are very small to be called planets.

• There also referred as minor or planetoids planets.

• Dangerous is what we call Asteroids some times.

• Most of the Asteroids lie in a vast ring between the orbits Jupiter and Mars. Asteroids are often called minor planets.

• The mass of all Asteroid in total is less than that of earths moon despite their sizes.

• Dangerous is what we call Asteroids some times.

• Many asteroids have hit our planet earth in the past, And a lot more will crash in the near future.

Phases of the Moon

• The easiest way to probably understand the moon cycle is, new and full moon, first quarter and third quarter and the phases between.

• The earth is on the opposite side of the moon.

• Approximately one half of the moon is illuminated by the Sun.

• The moon has a shadowed part of invisible to the naked eye.

• A half moon is a 90 degree angle with respect to the earth and the sun.

• every one month the moon goes through a complete moon phases cycle But shockingly it is not exactly one month it is 29.5305882 days.

• If you were handed to view the moon cycling the earth from outside our solar system it would take two days less 27.3217 days.

• According to scientist at special times during the year the sun and the earth moon do in fact line up.

Recent facts about the Earths Moon

• The moon is formed out of the Earth our planet.

• The moon is slowly drifting away.

• Only a tiny bit of astronauts have ever visited the moon.

• Neil Armstrong was the first person to step foot in the moon it was from the period 1969- 1972.

• Some countries could use the moon as a helping point to access other parts of the solar system.

• The moon could act as a proving ground for missions to other places in the solar system in the near future.

• NASA has given the mission to make more humans visit the moon hopefully again.

• NASA is begging a new era to be sending human beings in deeper in space than ever before.

Compare the earth centered and sun centered models of the solar system

• Early Greek Scientists thought the planets, sun and the moon fixed in separate spheres that rotated around Earth.

• The Stars were thought to be in another sphere that rotated around Earth.

• This was called the Earth-centered model of the solar system.

• It included Earth, the Moon, the Sun, five planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn and the sphere of stars.

• In 1543, Nicholas Copernicus published a different view. He stated that the Moon revolved around Earth and that the Earth and other planets revolved around the Sun.

• He also stated that the daily movement of the planets and the stars are caused by Earth’s rotation.

• This is the Sun centered model.

• Later on, Galileo concluded that the Sun is the center of the Solar system.

What are Sunspots

• Sunspots are cooler areas on the surface of the sun at a region called the Photosphere.

• The temperature of Sunspots is about 3,800 degrees K.

• Sunspots look dark only in the comparison with the photosphere brightness and hotter regions.

• Sunspots can be very large to 50,000 kilometers in diameter.

• Sunspots are caused by interactions with the suns magnetic field.

• Sunspots mostly occur over regions of intense magnetic activity.

• The sunspot is formed on the surface of the sun and it appears visibly as dark spots compared to their surrounding.

• Sunspots are a lot bigger than earth.

• Sunspots are always dark because are much cooler than the surface itself.

• A very big sunspot can have the temperature 3700 Celsius.

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What are Prominences

1. a solar prominence is an arc of gas, that it erupts from the suns surface.

2. It can loop hundreds of thousands of miles into space.

3. They are held above the suns surface by strong magnetic fields and they can last for many months.

4. At some time in there life most of the Prominences will erupt it will spewing enormous amounts of solar material into space.

5. They can be as small as a sunspot, and can be about the size of a earth or maybe be like nearly the suns diameter.

6. Prominences can contain 10 to 100 billion tons of heated plasma extending far into the corona of the sun.

7. for some reasons it can be caused by the intense of magnetic fields that are associated with sunspots. .

8. the typical sizes of the Solar Prominences can be 10times the diameter around the Earth .

What are solar flares

• solar flares occur is when magnetic energy that has build up in the solar atmosphere is suddenly released.

• The amount of energy released in solar flares is the equivalent of millions of 100-megaton hydrogen bombs exploding at the same time.

• The first solar flare recorded in the history in astronomical literature was on September 1,1859.

• The two scientist who were observing sun spots at the time were Richard c. Carrington and Richard Hodgson.

• A corona is a Solar flare extend out to the layer of the sun.

• A person cannot see solar flares by simply staring at the result eye damage can result.

• They- solar flares occur un active regions.

Bonus Question

• Q)Have scientists found other planets outside our solar system that can support life?

• A) So far there has not been a single trace of life of any other

planet in our solar system The only planet that has life is our planet the Earth.