Exploring the Solar System: Unique Features and Planetary Orbits, Lecture notes of English

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Space & the planets

Home learning project

Space and the Planets

• Which force keeps the planets in orbit around the

Sun? Gravity

• What is the order of the planets in our Solar system in

order from the Sun?

• Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus,

Neptune.

• There are eight planets in our Solar system.

.

Mercury

Name: Mercury Distance from the Sun: The distance from the Sun to Mercury is 57,900,00 Km! Length of day: The days on Mercury last 59 Earth days. Length of year: A whole year on Mercury lasts 88 Earth days. Number of moons: Mercury doesn’t have any moons, Mercury is not in a position to form or capture one. Place in Solar system (in order from the Sun): Mercury is the closest to our Sun. How did the planet get its name: Mercury got its name from the Roman God ‘Mercury’. The god had wings on his helmet and shoes, Mercury rotates quickly, that is how it got its name. Interesting fact: Mercury has the most craters in the Solar system (Western Europe could fit the biggest crater on Mercury).

Venus

Name: Venus Distance from the Sun: The distance from the Sun to Venus is 108,000,000 Km! Length of day: The days on Venus last 243 Earth days. Length of year: The years on Venus last 224.7 Earth days (the days on Venus are longer than the years!) Number of moons: Venus has no moons. Place in the Solar system (in order from the Sun): Venus comes after Mercury in order from the Sun so it comes second. How did the planet get its name: Venus is named after a Roman goddess who was known as Aphrodite to the Ancient Greeks. Interesting fact: Venus spins clockwise on its axis.

Earth

Name: Earth Distance from the Sun: The distance from the Sun to Earth is 149,600,000 Km. Length of day: The days on Earth last 24 hours. Length of year: The years on Earth last 365 ¼ days. Number of moons: Earth has just one moon. Place In the Solar system (in order from the Sun): The Earth comes after Venus, which makes it third in order from the Sun. How did the planet get its name: Earth’s name is derived from English and German words, ‘eartha’ and ‘erde’. Interesting fact: 71% of Earth is covered with water, the rest with islands and continents!

Mars

Name: Mars Distance from the Sun: The distance from the Sun to Mars is 227.9 million km! Length of day: the days on Mars last 24.7 hours. Length of year: A year on Mars in an astonishing 687 Earth days! That’s nearly twice as long as our years on Earth! Number of moons: Mars has 2 moons. Place in the Solar system (in order from the Sun): Mars comes after Earth in our Solar system, so it is the fourth closest to our Sun. How did the planet get its name: Mars was named after the ancient Romans because of its red colour, like blood. Interesting fact: Today, Mars has frozen water.

Jupiter

Name: Jupiter Distance from the Sun: The distance from the Sun to Jupiter is 778,600,000 Km! Length of day: The days on Jupiter only last 9.9 hours. Length of year: The years on Jupiter last 11.9 Earth years, that’s crazy! Number of moons: Jupiter has 79 moons, more than any other planet in our Solar system. Place in the Solar system (in order from the Sun): Jupiter comes after Mars in our Solar system, therefore the planet is the fifth closest to the Sun. How did the planet get its name: Being the biggest planet, Jupiter gets its name from the king of the Roman gods. Interesting fact: Jupiter’s clouds are 50km thick.

Saturn

Name: Saturn Distance from the Sun: The distance from the Sun to Saturn is 1,433,000,000Km! Length of day: The days on Saturn only last 10.7 hours. Length of year: The years on Saturn last 29.4 Earth years, Wow that’s a long year! Number of moons: Saturn has 62 moons. Place in the Solar system (In order from the Sun): Saturn comes after Jupiter in our Solar system, so it must be the sixth closest to the Sun. How did the planet get its name: The English word ‘Saturday’ comes from the Anglo Saxon word, Sæturnesdæg, this translates to the words ‘Saturn’s day’. That’s how the planet got its name. Interesting fact: Saturn’s rings are made of billions of small chunks of ice and rock!

Uranus

Name: Uranus Distance from the Sun: The distance from the Sun to Uranus is 2,857,250,000 Km! Length of day: The days on Uranus last 17.2 hours. Length of year: The years on Uranus last 83.8 Earth years! Number of moons: Uranus has 27 moons. Place in our Solar system (in order from the Sun): Uranus comes after Saturn in our Solar system, therefore it must be the seventh closest to the Sun. How did the Planet get its name: Uranus was named after an ancient Greek god of the sky by Elert Bode. Interesting fact: Uranus is known as the ‘sideways planet’. This is because it rotates on its side.

Neptune

Name: Neptune Distance from the Sun: The distance from the Sun to Neptune is 4,495,100,000, Wow! Length of day: The days on Neptune last around 16 hours (16.1). Length of year: The years on Neptune are extremely long, because the planet is the furthest away from the Sun. The years last 163.8 Earth years on Neptune! Number of moons: Neptune has 14 moons. Place in the Solar system (in order from the Sun): Neptune comes after Uranus, so it’s the furthest away from the Sun. How did the planet get its name: Neptune was named after the Roman god of the sea, its moons are named after various sea gods in Greek mythology. Interesting fact: Neptune has the strongest winds in the Solar system!

Unique features

From reading those fact files, you can recognise every planet is unique. It doesn’t

matter if it’s the colour, the size, the time difference, the winds. Every planet is

different from one-another.

How do we know?

Well, there are satellites hundreds of miles above us, in the atmosphere. These

satellites are able to view our solar system and capture images of the planets. We

may not be able to land on these planets, although NASA is able to see some of

our Solar system which helps them figure out the unique factors of each planet.