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It's really hot inside Jupiter! No one knows exactly how hot, but scientists think it could be about 43,000°F (24,000°C) near Jupiter's center, or core.

Jupiter is made up almost entirely of hydrogen and helium. On the surface of Jupiter-and on Earth-those elements are gases. However inside Jupiter, hydrogen can be a liquid, or even a kind of metal.

These changes happen because of the tremendous temperatures and pressures found at the core.

Have you ever gone swimming at the deep end of a pool? Did you notice that your ears started to hurt a little bit when you were under water? The deeper you dive, the more water there is on top of you. All of that water presses on your body-and that's pressure.

The same type of pressure happens in Jupiter's core. Under low pressure, particles of hydrogen and helium, called molecules, have lots of room to bounce around. This is when hydrogen and helium are gases.

However, the weight of all this hydrogen and helium is really heavy. This weight presses down toward the planet's core, creating high pressure. The molecules run out of room to bounce around, so instead, they slow down and crowd together. This creates a liquid.

Imagine if you swam to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. You would feel more than 16,000 pounds of force pressing down on every square inch of your body. That is approximately the weight of four cars!

The pressure at the center of Jupiter is much higher. At Jupiter's core, you would feel as much as 650 million pounds of pressure pressing down on every square inch of your body. That would be like having approximately 160,000 cars stacked up in every direction all over your body!

At the moment, scientists aren't 100% sure. It may be that the planet has a solid core that is bigger than Earth. But some scientists think it could be more like a thick, boiling-hot soup.

NASA's Juno mission is designed to find answers to such remaining questions about Jupiter. The spacecraft is orbiting the giant planet, swooping in for close-up looks to get more detailed information.

Juno has already made many new discoveries about Jupiter. Scientists hope that information from Juno will help us measure Jupiter's mass and figure out whether or not the giant planet's core is solid.

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It's really hot inside Jupiter! No one knows exactly how hot, but scientists think it could be about 43,000°F (24,000°C) near Jupiter's center, or core. Jupiter is made up almost entirely of hydrogen and helium. On the surface of Jupiter-and on Earth-those elements are gases.

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Scientists have ideas about why Saturn has rings, but no one knows for sure.

Are they solid like the CD you used to make your model? Or are they made of many particles dancing in formation around the planet? Four robotic spacecraft from Earth have visited Saturn-Pioneer 11, Voyager 1, Voyager 2 and Cassini. They have revealed many surprising things about Saturn's rings.

The rings are about 400,000 kilometers (240,000 miles) wide. That's the distance from the Earth to the Moon! But the rings are as little as 100 meters (330 feet) thick. They range from particles too tiny to see to "particles" the size of a bus. Scientists think they are icy snowballs or ice covered rocks.

There are actually many rings-maybe 500 to 1000. There are also gaps in the rings.

The Cassini spacecraft arrived at Saturn in July 2004. It orbited Saturn for 13 years, studying Saturn, its rings, and its moons much more thoroughly than the earlier spacecraft could.

Cassini also carried a probe, called Huygens (HOY-guns), that parachuted into the atmosphere of Saturn's giant moon Titan. Huygens sent back amazing information and images from this strange world whose surface we have never seen.

Cassini and Huygens made many exciting discoveries. In September 2017, Cassini ended its mission with a planned plunge into Saturn's atmosphere.

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Scientists have ideas about why Saturn has rings, but no one knows for sure. Are they solid like the CD you used to make your model ? Or are they made of many particles dancing in formation around the planet? Four robotic spacecraft from Earth have visited Saturn-Pioneer 11, Voyager 1, Voyager 2 and Cassini.

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Earth | NASA Space Place – NASA Science for Kids

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Articles, games and activities about our home planet

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Neptune is dark, cold, and very windy. It's the last of the planets in our solar system. It's more than 30 times as far from the sun as Earth is. Neptune is very similar to Uranus. It's made of a thick fog of water, ammonia, and methane over an Earth-sized solid center. Its atmosphere is made of hydrogen, helium, and methane. The methane gives Neptune the same blue color as Uranus. Neptune has six rings, but they're very hard to see.

Structure and Surface

Neptune is encircled by six rings.

Neptune, like Uranus, is an ice giant. It's similar to a gas giant. It is made of a thick soup of water, ammonia, and methane flowing over a solid core about the size of Earth.

Neptune has a thick, windy atmosphere.

Time on Neptune

One day on Neptune goes by in 16 hours.

Neptune has such a long journey around the Sun it takes 165 Earth years to go around once. That's a long year!

Neptune's Neighbors

Neptune has 14 moons.

Neptune is the eighth and most distant planet from the Sun. That means Uranus is Neptune's only neighboring planet.

Quick History

Neptune was discovered in 1846 by Urbain Le Verrier, John Couch Adams, and Johann Galle.

Only Voyager 2 has visited Neptune.

What does Neptune look like?

For more information visit:
NASA Solar System Exploration

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Uranus is made of water, methane, and ammonia fluids above a small rocky center. Its atmosphere is made of hydrogen and helium like Jupiter and Saturn, but it also has methane. The methane makes Uranus blue.

Uranus also has faint rings. The inner rings are narrow and dark. The outer rings are brightly colored and easier to see. Like Venus, Uranus rotates in the opposite direction as most other planets. And unlike any other planet, Uranus rotates on its side.

Structure and Surface

Uranus is surrounded by a set of 13 rings.

Uranus is an ice giant (instead of a gas giant). It is mostly made of flowing icy materials above a solid core.

Uranus has a thick atmosphere made of methane, hydrogen, and helium.

Uranus is the only planet that spins on its side.

Uranus spins the opposite direction as Earth and most other planets.

Time on Uranus

One day on Uranus lasts a little over 17 hours (17 hours and 14 minutes, to be exact).

One year on Uranus is the same as 84 years on Earth. That's a long time to wait for a birthday cake.

Uranus' Neighbors

Uranus has 27 known moons.

Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun. That means Saturn and Neptune are Uranus' neighboring planets.

Quick History

Uranus was discovered in 1781 by William Herschel in Great Britain.

Uranus has only been visited by Voyager 2.

What does Uranus look like?

For more information visit:
NASA Solar System Exploration

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NASA's real-time portal for Mars exploration, featuring the latest news, images, and discoveries from the Red Planet.

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Mercury is the smallest planet in our solar system. It's just a little bigger than Earth's moon. It is the closest planet to the sun, but it's actually not the hottest. Venus is hotter.

Along with Venus, Earth, and Mars, Mercury is one of the rocky planets. It has a solid surface that is covered with craters. It has no atmosphere, and it doesn't have any moons. Mercury likes to keep things simple.

This small planet spins around slowly compared to Earth, so one day lasts a long time. Mercury takes 59 Earth days to make one full rotation. A year on Mercury goes by fast. Because it's the closest planet to the sun, it doesn't take very long to go all the way around. It completes one revolution around the sun in just 88 Earth days. If you lived on Mercury, you'd have a birthday every three months!

A day on Mercury is not like a day here on Earth. For us, the sun rises and sets each and every day. Because Mercury has a slow spin and short year, it takes a long time for the sun to rise and set there. Mercury only has one sunrise every 180 Earth days! Isn't that weird?

Structure and Surface

Mercury is the smallest planet in our solar system.

Mercury is a terrestrial planet. It is small and rocky.

Mercury doesn't really have an atmosphere.

Time on Mercury

A day on Mercury lasts 59 Earth days.

A year on Mercury lasts 88 Earth days.

Mercury's Neighbors

Mercury does not have any moons.

Mercury is the closest planet to the sun.

Venus is Mercury's neighboring planet.

Quick History

Mercury has been known since ancient times because it can be seen without advanced telescopes.

Mercury has been visited by two spacecraft: Mariner 10 and MESSENGER.

What does Mercury look like?

For more information visit:
NASA Solar System Exploration

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Even though Venus isn't the closest planet to the Sun, it is still the hottest. It has a thick atmosphere full of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide and clouds made of sulfuric acid. The gas traps heat and keeps Venus toasty warm. In fact, it's so hot on Venus, metals like lead would be puddles of melted liquid.

Venus looks like a very active planet. It has mountains and volcanoes. Venus is similar in size to Earth. Earth is just a little bit bigger.

Venus is unusual because it spins the opposite direction of Earth and most other planets. And its rotation is very slow. It takes about 243 Earth days to spin around just once. Because it's so close to the Sun, a year goes by fast. It takes 225 Earth days for Venus to go all the way around the Sun. That means that a day on Venus is a little longer than a year on Venus.

Since the day and year lengths are similar, one day on Venus is not like a day on Earth. Here, the Sun rises and sets once each day. But on Venus, the Sun rises every 117 Earth days. That means the Sun rises two times during each year on Venus, even though it is still the same day on Venus! And because Venus rotates backwards, the Sun rises in the west and sets in the east.

Just like Mercury, Venus doesn't have any moons.

Structure and Surface

Venus is the hottest planet in our solar system.

Venus is a terrestrial planet. It is small and rocky.

Venus has a thick atmosphere. It traps heat and makes Venus very hot.

Venus has an active surface, including volcanoes!

Venus spins the opposite direction of Earth and most other planets.

Time on Venus

A day on Venus lasts 243 Earth days.

A year on Venus lasts 225 Earth days.

Venus's Neighbors

Venus does not have any moons.

Venus is the second planet from the Sun. That means Mercury and Earth are Venus's neighboring planets.

Quick History

Venus has been known since ancient times because it can be seen easily without a telescope.

Venus has been visited by several spacecraft: Mariner 2, Mariner 5, Mariner 10, Pioneer Venus 1, Pioneer Venus 2, and an orbiter called Magellan.

What does Venus look like?

For more information visit:
NASA Solar System Exploration

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All About Mars | NASA Space Place – NASA Science for Kids

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The first spacecraft from Earth to visit Mars was Mariner 4 in 1965. Since then, several robotic spacecraft have flown by, orbited, or landed on Mars and sent back lots of information about this world so different from our own.

Mars is a cold, bleak wasteland, with very thin air that we Earthlings could never breathe. However, many of the pictures our telescopes, orbiters, and rovers have sent back show signs that liquid water might have been on the surface of Mars long ago. Also, we can see ice caps at the north and south poles.

All these signs of water are very exciting. Why? Because on Earth, almost everywhere there is water, there is life. Whether the water is boiling hot or frozen, some sort of creature seems to thrive in it. Is it the same on other planets? If water once flowed on Mars, did life once thrive there too? Or, maybe there is still water on Mars, only it has gone underground. Could there be tiny life forms-like bacteria-on Mars even now?

NASA's four goals in exploring Mars:

Find out if life ever existed on Mars.

NASA scientists will look for water and places where living things might use heat energy from under ground. They will also look for signs of carbon, which is an element needed for life as we know it.

Learn about the climate on Mars.

Scientists who study the Martian climate will look at the melting and freezing of the polar ice caps. They'll also study the many dust storms on Mars, such as the storm shown in this image.

Learn about the geology on Mars.

Geologists will study Martian rocks, volcanoes, craters, valleys, ridges, cracks, crannies, and other land formations to try to figure out how they were formed. The Martian volcano shown in this image, Olympus Mons, is the largest volcano in the solar system!

Prepare for humans to go to Mars!

NASA will develop technologies to help humans survive and explore the harsh Martian environment.

Mars Games:
Explore Mars! Adventure to Mars!

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The first spacecraft from Earth to visit Mars was Mariner 4 in 1965. Since then, several robotic spacecraft have flown by, orbited, or landed on Mars and sent back lots of information about this world so different from our own. Mars is a cold, bleak wasteland, with very thin air that we Earthlings could never breathe.

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Jupiter is the biggest planet in our solar system. It's similar to a star, but it never got massive enough to start burning. It is covered in swirling cloud stripes. It has big storms like the Great Red Spot, which has been going for hundreds of years. Jupiter is a gas giant and doesn't have a solid surface, but it may have a solid inner core about the size of Earth. Jupiter also has rings, but they're too faint to see very well.

Structure and Surface

Jupiter is the biggest planet in our solar system.

Jupiter is a gas giant. It is made mostly of hydrogen and helium.

Jupiter has a very thick atmosphere.

Jupiter has rings, but they're very hard to see.

Time on Jupiter

One day on Jupiter goes by in just 10 hours.

One year on Jupiter is the same as 11.8 Earth years.

Jupiter's Neighbors

Jupiter has 80 confirmed moons.

Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun. That means Mars and Saturn are Jupiter's neighboring planets.

Quick History

Jupiter has been known since ancient times because it can be seen without advanced telescopes.

Jupiter has been visited or passed by several spacecraft, orbiters and probes, such as Pioneer 10 and 11, Voyager 1 and 2, Cassini, New Horizons, and Juno.

What does Jupiter look like?

For more information visit:
NASA Solar System Exploration

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Mercury is named after the Roman god of commerce, travel, and thievery. In Greek mythology, Mercury was known as Hermes, the messenger of the gods. It probably received this name because it moves very quickly across the sky.

Key Facts & Summary

Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun at a distance of 57 million kilometers / 35 million miles.

Out of all the terrestrial planets, Mercury is the smallest. It is also the smallest planet in the Solar System.

Despite being so small, Mercury is the second-densest planet in the Solar System after Earth. This means it is very compact.

Mercury does not have any satellites or ring systems.

The surface of Mercury is similar to the Moon. It is the most heavily cratered planet and this means that it hasn't been geologically active for many years.

Mercury has a radius of 2.439 km / 1.516 mi and a diameter of 4.879 km / 3.032 mi.

Though it is the closest planet to the Sun, temperatures on Mercury are both hot and cold.

During the day, Mercury's average surface temperatures can reach up to 800 degrees Fahrenheit / 430 degrees Celsius.

At night, Mercury's surface temperatures can drop to as low as -290 degrees Fahrenheit / -180 degrees Celsius.

Mercury's changes in temperature are the most drastic in the Solar System.

Mercury formed around 4.5 billion years ago after gravity pulled swirling gases and dust together.

After Mercury was formed, scientists believe that it suffered heavy bombardments by comets and asteroids shortly after. Another event called the Late Heavy Bombardment which ended around 3.8 billion years ago, may also be responsible for Mercury's cratered surface.

Almost 85% of Mercury's radius is represented by its enormous iron core.

Due to the core's unusual size, Mercury began to shrink as the core cooled and contracted pulling the surface inward.

Mercury is the smallest planet in the Solar System and the closest planet to the Sun. Though it is very close to the Sun, it is not the hottest planet, that title belongs to Venus, but Mercury is the second-hottest nonetheless.

Mercury is slightly bigger than Earth's Moon, and it is also very similar in appearance to our Moon. Mercury itself doesn't have any moons. The planet can be seen without binoculars or telescopes, but since it is so near to the Sun, it may be hard to see in the early evening skies.

Surface and structure

Mercury is covered with craters from various impacts. One of the largest is called the Caloris Basin, and it is 1.300 kilometers / 807 miles across.

It was probably created by a big impact long ago. Mercury has a very thin atmosphere called an exosphere. It is made out of oxygen, sodium, hydrogen, helium, and potassium.

Since its surface is similar to our Moon, it indicates that the small planet hasn't been geologically active for many years. The planet is primarily made out of rocks.

Though it is very hot on Mercury, frozen water exists on its surface. Some of the deep craters present at the poles are never exposed to direct sunlight, and temperatures remain very low there.

Time on Mercury

Mercury spins around slowly compared to Earth. One day on Mercury is 59 Earth days. However, a year on Mercury goes by fast. Because it is close to the Sun, it doesn't take very long to go all the way around it.

Mercury circles the Sun once every 88 Earth days. If you would live on Mercury, you'd have a birthday every three months! Mercury has the shortest year of any planet. It moves around the Sun with a speed of 47 kilometers / 29 miles per second.

Though on Earth, the Sun rises and sets every day, on Mercury, it takes a long time for this to happen. A sunrise happens on Mercury once every 180 Earth days.

Fun Facts

1. In ancient times, Mercury was mistakenly thought of as being two different objects in the sky: The Mourning Star and The Evening Star.

2. Mercury orbits the Sun with a speed of around 47 kilometers / 29 miles per second. It is the fastest planet.

3. It takes sunlight 3.2 minutes to travel from the Sun to Mercury. If you were on Mercury and the Sun suddenly disappeared, you would notice this only after 3.2 minutes.

4. Mercury and Venus orbit the Sun within Earth's orbit. This makes them inferior planets.

5. The crater Caloris Basin on Mercury is large enough to fit the state of Texas.

6. NASA has mapped the entire surface of Mercury.

7. Mercury's core has a higher iron content than that of any other major planet in the Solar System.

8. Sometimes, Mercury streams particles off of its surface and results in a tail, similar to a comet.

9. An event called a "transit" occurs 13 times every century making it possible to see Mercury from Earth, as it crosses the Sun's face.

Size and Comparison

We know that Mercury is the smallest planet. It has a radius of 2.439 km / 1.516 mi and a diameter of 4.879 km / 3.032 mi. But how does it compare to the other planets in the Solar System?

Both Venus and Earth are around three times bigger than Mercury. Mars is only 30% bigger than Mercury but now let's take a look at the giants of the Solar System.

Neptune and Uranus have more than 10 times the diameter of Mercury. Saturn has 23 times the diameter of Mercury while Jupiter, the biggest planet in the Solar System, has more than 29 times the diameter of Mercury. More than 24.462 Mercury's would fit inside Jupiter's volume.

Trivia

Who discovered Mercury?

The naming and discovery of Mercury cannot be attributed to anyone. The ancients knew about Mercury for many years since it is visible with the naked eye.

One of the earliest known recorded observations of Mercury is the Mul.Apin tablets. It is believed that these observations were made by an ancient Assyrian astronomer around the 14 th century BC. The translation of Mercury's name written upon those tablets translates to "the jumping planet."

Planet Nabu

The Babylonians called Mercury, Nabu. Some of their records date back to the 1 st millennium BC. Nabu is also the messenger of the gods in Babylonian mythology.

Mercury suffered a great collision

Mercury is theorized to be 4.5 billion years old. Gravity pulled the swirling gas and dust together and formed the small planet. However, Mercury has an enormous core and scientists believe that this is the result of a collision. Another giant object smashed into Mercury and stripped much of its surface.

Other Characteristics

Though Venus is the closest planet to Earth, it spends most of its time far away. This makes Mercury the nearest planet to Earth, at least for certain periods. Since Mercury has a thin atmosphere, temperatures at night drop very low, from 430 degrees Celsius during the day, to -180 degrees Celsius at night.

Mercury doesn't have any moons, and since it is very close to the Sun, it will never have. The Sun will basically steal any satellite of Mercury.

The core of Mercury has high amounts of iron, more so than any major planet in the Solar System. NASA has mapped the entire surface of Mercury, and yes, it is the most cratered planet in the Solar System.

Since Mercury is close to us, we can easily send spacecraft or probes to it. The third spacecraft set to arrive on Mercury is named BepiColombo, and it should arrive at Mercury in 2025.

Mercury Notes

Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun, but not the hottest.

It is the smallest planet in the Solar System, it doesn't experience any seasons, temperatures drastically change during day and night because it has a thin atmosphere, and it is the most heavily cratered planet.

Mercury doesn't have a moon, and since it is so close to the Sun, it will never have a moon.

Mercury is about twice as large as Pluto, and it would take 18 Mercury's to match Earth's size.

The first spacecraft to explore Mercury was NASA's Mariner 10, it happened in 1974.

If you were on Mercury, the Sun would appear three times as large in the sky as it does when viewed from Earth. The sunlight, however, would be seven times more powerful.

Mercury's core which pulled its surface inward due to contraction is believed to have reduced the planet's size between 1 - 7 km / 4 mi.

[1.] Wikipedia

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Mercury Facts for Kids | Fun & Interesting Information & History

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Mercury is the planet closest to our Sun, and it is the eighth largest of the nine planets. Click for even more facts and information for kids.

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The planet Venus is named after the ancient Roman goddess of love and beauty. In Greek mythology, she is known as Aphrodite. The planet was named after this goddess because, for the ancient people, it shinned the brightest.

Key Facts & Summary

Venus is the second planet from the Sun, and the sixth-largest planet in the Solar System.

Venus and Mercury are the only planets in the Solar System that do not have a moon.

Venus is the second brightest object in the sky after the Moon, and the Sun.

It is the only planet named after a female deity and the brightest planet in the Solar System.

Venus is 62 degrees hotter than Mercury, the closest planet to the Sun.

Venus has a radius of 6.051 kilometers / 3.760 miles, and a diameter of 12.104 km / 7.521 mi. It is only slightly smaller than Earth.

Venus is at a distance of 108 million km / 68 million mi away from the Sun.

One day on Venus lasts for about 243 Earth days. This is the slowest rotation of any planet making it the most spherical object in the Solar System, after the Sun.

Venus and Uranus rotate in the opposite direction than the other planets. They both move from East to West, clockwise.

Venus has montains, valleys, and tens of thousands of volcanoes. The highest mountain on Venus, Maxwell Montes, is 20,000 feet / 8.8 kilometers high - very similar to the highest mountain on Earth, Everest.

Apart from lacking any moons, Venus also doesn't have a ring system, and because it rotates very slowly, its magnetosphere is also very weak.

The average temperatures on Venus have been estimated to be at around 465 degrees Celsius / 900 degrees Fahrenheit, this is hot enough to melt lead.

Venus is very similar to Earth, and because of this, it is referred to as Earth's sister.

In our Solar System, the planet closest to the Sun is Mercury. But even though it is the nearest, it isn't the hottest planet. Venus is actually the hottest planet out of all the planets in the Solar System.

But how can this be? Well, Venus has gases and clouds of sulfuric acid that traps the heat and keeps Venus toasty warm. It is so hot on Venus, that even metals would melt and become liquid.

Surface and Structure

Venus is a little smaller than Earth, but like our planet, it has mountains, volcanoes, and few craters that indicate a relatively young surface. Both worlds also have similar densities and chemical compositions.

Venus is sometimes referred to as Earth's sister since scientists believe that it once had large amounts of water; however, it boiled away due to high temperatures.

This might have also happened to our planet if it was closer to the Sun. Venus is quite special since it spins in the opposite direction of most other planets, including Earth.

Most of Venus's surface consists of gently rolling plains. Mountains and hills are rare. Much of the surface is covered by lava flows. In fact, there are plenty of large volcanoes like the ones in Hawaii on Venus.

One of the largest volcanoes on Venus is Sif Mons. The interesting fact is that Venus has many active volcanoes on its surface to this day.

Time on Venus

Venus's rotation is also very slow. One day on Venus is equal to 243 Earth days, and one year or one trip around the Sun takes 225 Earth days. This means that a day is longer than a year on Venus.

On Venus, the Sun rises once every 117 Earth days, this means that the Sun rises twice each Venusian year. On Earth, the Sun rises and sets once each day.

Since Venus rotates backwards, the Sun rises in the west and sets in the east.

Fun Facts:

1. The symbol for Venus is actually the world symbol for the female gender.

2. Though Venus can be easily seen, its surface is hidden by thick clouds and because of this, it was believed for a long time that the planet was similar to Earth.

3. The big surprise came when with the advancement of technology, we managed to pierce through Venus's clouds and observe its surface, and it doesn't look like Earth at all.

4. Venus reflects 70% of all the sunlight it receives and this is the reason for why it shines so bright.

5. Because of its brightness, Venus has been the most confused object in the sky. Many have misreported it as an UFO, and many still do so to this day.

6. Venus is among the most visited planets in the Solar System. More than 40 spacecraft have explored it.

7. In ancient times, Venus was thought of as two different objects in the sky: The Mourning Star, and the Evening Star. The same confusion happened with the planet Mercury.

8. The first accurate observations of Venus were conducted by Galileo Galilei in 1610.

9. It takes sunlight 6 minutes to reach Venus. If you were on Venus and the Sun suddenly disappeared, you would only notice it after 6 minutes.

10. Earth orbits around the Sun 8 times for every 13 orbits of Venus.

Size and Comparison

Venus has a radius of 6.051 kilometers / 3.760 miles and a diameter of 12.104 km / 7.521 mi. It is only slightly smaller than Earth. It is the sixth-largest planet in the Solar System and the second-largest terrestrial planet.

In comparison to Mars, Venus is two times bigger. Jupiter, the largest planet in the Solar System, has more than 11 times the diameter of Venus. On the other end, Mercury, the smallest planet in the Solar System, is three times smaller than Venus.

Trivia

Earth's Sister

Venus is Earth's sister since it has a similar size, density, a similar internal structure, mass, volume, and atmospheric components of carbon dioxide and nitrogen.

Many believe that Venus was even more similar to Earth billions of years ago, having even oceans, but something happened and changed all of this.

The Morning and Evening Star

The Venus tablet of Ammisaduqa, believed to have been compiled around the mid-17 th century BCE, shows that the Babylonians understood that the Evening Star and Morning Star were a single object.

Venus was referred to in the tablet as the "bright queen of the sky", and they could support this view with detailed observations. The Chinese people referred to the mourning Venus as The Great White or Opener of Brightness, and they reffered to the evening Venus as the Excellent West One.

Other characteristics

Venus and Mercury are the only terrestrial planets in the Solar System that don't have moons. The planets closest to Venus, its neighbors, are Earth and Mercury.

Venus is almost always visible with the naked eye. You don't need binoculars or telescopes to see it. In ancient times, the planet was also called the "morning star" or the "evening star" since it is very bright.

Some of the craters on Venus look like big spiders, and because of this, they have been named "Arachnoids." Some of the Volcanoes appear to be so squashed from above, they have been named "pancake volcanoes."

Venus Notes

Venus is the sixth-largest planet in the Solar System, but it is the second-largest out of the terrestrial planets.

The clouds on Venus are yellowish since they aren't made of water like the ones on Earth. Instead, they are formed from a poison called sulfuric acid.

Venus is very hot - about 400 degrees Celsius. Temperatures don't change even when at night.

Though Venus has many clouds, it is too hot to rain.

Venus has been visited by more than 40 spacecraft. The first was Mariner 2 in 1962. Some of these spacecraft include Mariner 5, Mariner 10, Pioneer Venus 1, Pioneer Venus 2, and an orbiter called Magellan.

Venus doesn't have a moon.

The Americans were the first to land on the Moon, but the Russian's sent the first spacecraft to Venus.

Any spacecraft sent to Venus survives for around an hour because of the hot temperatures.

[1.] Wikipedia

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Venus Facts for Kids | Information, Location, Summary & History

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Venus is the second planet from the Sun, and the sixth largest of all the planets. It is named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty.

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Earth Facts for Kids | Facts, Temperature, Habitation, Information & History

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Earth is the only planet whose English name does not derive from Greek or Roman mythology. Click for even more facts and information.

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Aw snap! Google Earth isn't supported on your browser. You may need to update your browser or use a different browser. Please see our system requirements for more information. Chrome is a great choice and you can download it here.

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Learn more about Google Earth.

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Aw snap! Google Earth isn't supported on your browser. You may need to update your browser or use a different browser. Please see our system requirements for more information. Chrome is a great choice and you can download it here. Or if you're feeling adventurous, you can try Earth anyway by choosing an option below.

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Mars is named after the Roman god of war. For the Greeks, Mars was known as Ares. It was named after the god of war because of its red color.

Key Facts & Summary

Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the second-smallest planet of the Solar System.

Mars is the most widely searched planet for life, inspiring many works of fiction.

The first person to observe Mars with the use of a telescope was Galileo Galilei. He observed the Red Planet in 1610.

Mars is 227.9 million kilometers / 141.6 million miles away from the Sun.

Light from the Sun reaches Mars in about 13 minutes.

Mars is around two times smaller than Earth. It has a diameter of 6.779 km / 4.212 mi.

Mars is around 10 times less massive than Earth.

Mars is the outermost terrestrial planet, outside Earth's orbit. It is 50% farther away from the Sun than Earth.

Mars has two known natural satellites, Phobos and Deimos.

Phobos is predicted to suffer a collision with Mars in the distant future.

The atmosphere on Mars is thin, mostly comprised of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and argon gases.

The tallest volcano/mountain in the Solar System is located on Mars. It is named Olympus Mons and it seems to have a height of 21 km / 13 mi.

Mars also has the biggest canyon in the Solar System. It is named Valles Marines. It is 4.000 km / 2.500 mi long and reaches depths of 7 km / 4 mi deep. The Grand Canyon on Earth is only 446 km / 226 mi long, and only 1.6 km / 1 mi deep.

Mars doesn't have a magnetic field however some areas are highly magnetized.

The average temperatures on Mars is -80 degrees Fahrenheit / -60 degrees Celsius.

Mars represents masculinity and the symbol of the planet is used for the male gender.

Mars is widely known as the Red planet. Its reddish appearance is caused by the presence of rusty iron in the ground. The name of the month March is derived from Mars.

Mars is visible to the naked eye, and as such, you can see it without the use of a telescope or binoculars. The Red planet is very similar to Earth, and scientists are trying to find out if life was present there.

Surface and Structure

In many ways, Mars can be considered Earth's brother. It has seasons, polar ice caps, volcanoes, canyons, and weather. There are many signs of ancient floods on the Red Planet, but now water mostly exists in icy dirt and thin clouds.

There is evidence of liquid salty water in the ground, especially on hillsides. This may be great if people will go there in the future, but observations continue.

Mars is the seventh-largest planet of the Solar System and the fourth planet from the Sun. It has the most varied and complex terrain than any of the terrestrial planets, except for Earth.

On Mars's surface, we have discovered the biggest mountain in the Solar System. It is named Olympus Mons, and it is three times bigger than the largest mountain on Earth, Everest.

Another great feature of Mars is Valles Marineris, a network of canyons that run 4.000 km / 2.485 mi long and stand from 2 to 7 km / 1 to 4 mi tall.

Hellas Planitia is a huge crater on Mars created from an ancient impact. It is located on the Red Planet's southern hemisphere and its over 6 km / 3.7 mi deep and 2.000 km / 1.242 mi across.

Oceans and lakes may have existed on Mars long ago, but it seems that water was only around for a short period. Some believe that water exists underneath Mars's surface.

There are many differences in Mars's southern and northern hemispheres. For example, in the southern hemisphere, many ancient cratered highlands are present, similar to the ones on the Moon.

In the northern hemisphere, plains have undergone changes since the planet formed long ago, and this hemisphere is also lower in elevation.

Time on Mars

A day on Mars is a little longer than a day on Earth. It lasts about 24.6 hours. A year on Mars, however, or the time that takes for the Red Planet to circle our Sun, lasts about 687 Earth days or almost twice as long as a year on Earth.

Fun Facts

1. Mars has seasons just like Earth, but they last longer. This is because it takes longer for it to orbit the Sun. The seasons vary in length since Mars has an egg-shaped orbit around the Sun.

2. The longest season on Mars is spring, which lasts for 194 days. Autumn is the shortest lasting only 142 days.

3. Occasionally, winds on Mars are strong enough to create dust storms. It takes months for all the dust to settle, and this is a great impediment for the space probes sent there.

4. Mars doesn't have a ring system like Saturn. However, one of its moons, Phobos, will crash on Mars in the distant future and this may create a ring system around the Red Planet.

5. Many observations and analyses indicate that Mars was once very similar to Earth, having water or even whole oceans.

6. If you stood on Mars and looked at the Sun, it would appear about half the size as we see it on Earth.

7. Pieces of Mars have fallen on Earth. Scientists are studying these materials to this day.

8. If you would weigh 100kg on Earth, on Mars you would weigh 38kg because Mars's gravity is only 38% that of Earth.

9. Around six Mars-sized planets would fit the volume of Earth. However, it would take 7 million Mars-sized planets to fill the volume of the Sun.

10. A book written by Jonathan Swift mentioned the two moons of Mars 151 years before they were actually discovered.

11. Some believe that the Valles Marines on Mars is the result of a huge collision.

Size and Comparison

Mars is and the second-smallest planet of the Solar System after Mercury, having a diameter of 6.779 km / 4.212 mi. It is 30% bigger than Mercury and almost two times smaller than Earth and Venus.

Neptune and Uranus have around 7.2 times the diameter of Mars. Saturn, on the other hand, has 17.1 times its diameter. But the biggest planet in the Solar System is Jupiter, and it has more than 20 times the diameter of Mars.

Trivia

Life on Mars

Throughout much of the 19 th century, it was believed that life on Mars existed partly due to a mistake. An astronomer believed that he observed straight lines on Mars' surface.

Many believed that this could only be the work of intelligent life as the straight lines resembled canals for irrigation purposes. However, as more advanced telescopes were built and observations on Mars's surface were more accurate - it was revealed that the straight lines were an optical illusion.

Mars and Venus atmosphere similarity

If Mars is among the most hospitable planets, Venus is among the most inhospitable. However, their atmosphere is similar in regards to one component - carbon dioxide - 95% for Mars, 97% for Venus.

However, the main difference is that Venus's greenhouse effect traps temperatures at around 480 degrees Celsius, while Mars doesn't exceed 20 degrees Celsius.

Other Characteristics

Mars has a thin but active atmosphere. The surface of the Red Planet isn't active, however, its volcanoes are dead. The atmosphere on Mars is made of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and argon.

The planets closest to Mars, its neighbors, are Earth and Jupiter. Mars also has two moons, Phobos and Deimos. They are smaller than Earth's moon.

Phobos is slowly descending upon Mars, and scientists believe that one day it will crash on the Red Planet. Mars is the outermost terrestrial planet, almost 50% farther from the Sun than Earth.

Many missions were sent to Mars, so many that the Red Planet is theoretically populated with robots. Some projects here on Earth, want to colonize the Red Planet, beginning in 2022.

Mars Notes

Mars is a small planet, cold, and as far as we know, lifeless. However, it is the most hospitable planet in the Solar System, second only to Earth.

The first spacecraft to visit Mars was Mariner 4, this happened in 1965.

Mars has ice caps at both poles made up of solid carbon dioxide or dry ice.

Powerful dust storms and winds blow through the entire planet for months.

There are high chances that people will one day colonize the Red Planet.

Though Mars can become our second Earth, one of the biggest issues is gravity. The gravity on Mars can cause bone damage.

[2.] Wikipedia

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Mars Facts for Kids | Temperature, Surface & Information

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Mars is the god of War. In Greek mythology, he is known as Ares. The planet probably got this name due to its red color. Click for more kids facts.

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The planet Jupiter is named after the supreme Roman god. To the ancient Greeks, he was known as Zeus, ruler of the Greek gods, and Mount Olympus.

Key Facts & Summary

Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the biggest planet of our Solar System. Some consider it a failed star since it is made out of swirling gases and liquids such as 90% hydrogen, and 10% helium - very similar to the Sun.

Jupiter is the fourth brightest object in the sky and one of the five visible planets ( Mercury, Venus, Mars, Saturn ).

The envelope of gases - atmosphere - surrounding Jupiter is the largest planetary atmosphere in the Solar System. It makes up almost the entire planet. Basically, it doesn't have a true surface with its atmosphere reaching altitudes of 5.000 km / 1.864 mi.

Through the observations of Jupiter, the discovery of the four Galilean moons ended the belief that everything revolved around the Earth.

Jupiter has a total of 79 confirmed moons. It is second only to Saturn when it comes to the total amount of satellites.

Jupiter also has 3 ring systems but much smaller than Saturn's.

Though they can be seen only through ultraviolet, Jupiter's auroras are the brightest in the Solar System.

Jupiter has a mean radius of 69.911 kilometers / 43.440 miles, a diameter at the equator of around 142.984 km / 88.846 mi, and a diameter at the poles of 133.708 km / 83.082 mi.

Jupiter's mass is almost twice of all the Solar System's planets combined. It is 318 times more massive than Earth.

Jupiter is on average about 5.2 AU away from the Sun. One AU is equivalent to 150 million km / 93 million mi.

Jupiter experiences 200 times more asteroid and comet impacts than Earth.

In a way, Jupiter is the Solar System's vacuum cleaner, because of its powerful gravity which attracts many of the comets and asteroids to hit it rather than other planets.

Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest planet of the Solar System. It is more than twice as massive as all the other planets combined, being 318 times bigger than Earth.

The planet is very similar to a star, but it never got big enough to start burning. Jupiter has rings surrounding it, but they are very faint and hard to see.

It is the planet with the second-most moons, 79, after Saturn, who has 82. The closest planets to Jupiter are Mars and Saturn. The planet can be seen with the naked eye, you don't need a telescope or a pair of binoculars to see it.

Surface and Structure

Jupiter is a gas giant, just like Saturn. It is made mostly out of hydrogen and helium. It doesn't have a true surface, but it may have a solid core about the size of Earth at its center.

Jupiter is covered in swirling cloud stripes and has enormous storms like the Great Red Spot, which has been going on for hundreds of years.

The atmosphere is very thick, and it is made out of ammonia, sulfur, methane, and water vapor. Jupiter's atmosphere is the largest planetary atmosphere in the Solar System. It makes up almost the entire planet.

Time on Jupiter

A day on Jupiter goes by very fast. It only lasts for about 10 hours. However, since it is farther away from the Sun than Earth, one year on Jupiter - the time it takes for it to circle the Sun once - is equal to 11.8 Earth years.

Fun Facts

1. If Jupiter would be 75 times more massive than it currently is, it would become a star just like our Sun.

2. If you could somehow stand on Jupiter, and you would weigh 100 pounds on Earth, on Jupiter you would weigh 240 pounds due to the gravitational force. So basically, regardless of your weight, on Jupiter you would weigh 2.5 times more than on Earth.

3. We don't know how, but the ancient Babylonians wrote about Jupiter around 1.300 years ago. It may be the earliest recordings of the planet.

4. Because Jupiter spins very fast, probably the fastest out of all the planets, it is flattened a bit so it bulges at its equator.

5. The same speed gives power to Jupiter's strong magnetic field which is around 20 times stronger than Earth's. It is the most powerful magnetic field in the Solar System.

6. Jupiter is surrounded by dangerous waves of radiation, and this makes it hard for spacecraft to approach it.

7. The red spot on Jupiter was first seen in 1665 by an Italian astronomer named Giovanni Cassini.

8. If you could go down on Jupiter, the thin, cold atmosphere would become thicker and hotter until it turns into a thick, dark fog. The pressure further down is so great that the gases become liquid.

Size and Comparison

Jupiter has a mean radius of 69.911 kilometers / 43.440 miles, a diameter at the equator of around 142.984 km / 88.846 mi, and a diameter at the poles of 133.708 km / 83.082 mi. It is the biggest planet in the Solar System.

Compared to Earth, it has more than 11 times its diameter. Around 1.300 Earth's would fit inside Jupiter's volume. In comparison to Mercury, the smallest planet in the Solar System, it is more than 29 times its diameter. More than 24.462 Mercury's would fit inside Jupiter's volume.

Venus is similar to Earth in size, it has less than 11.8 times the diameter of Jupiter. Mars, on the other hand, has less than 20 times the diameter of Jupiter. Jupiter has around 2.8 times the diameter of Neptune and Uranus. In comparison to Saturn, it has 1.2 times its diameter.

Trivia

More Mass, Less Size?

Though Jupiter is 2.5 times more massive than all the planets of the Solar System combine, scientists predict that if it would get more mass, the giant would actually get smaller.

More mass will make the planet more dense, and this would cause it to start pulling it in on itself.

Is Jupiter a failed star?

Though some consider Jupiter a failed star, it doesn't have enough mass to trigger a fusion reaction in its core. That is the mechanism of how stars generate energy, by fusing hydrogen under extreme heat and pressure to create helium, releasing light and heat in the process.

This means that Jupiter has no way of becoming a star unless it would gain around 75 times more mass than it currently has.

Jupiter generates more heat than it receives from the Sun

Since it is the most massive planet in the Solar System, it is the closest to being a star, at least in terms of mass. Because of this mass, Jupiter generates high amounts of heat as it shrinks under gravity. It is unknown when Jupiter will stop shrinking.

Other Characteristics

The winds on Jupiter are very powerful. They are trapped in the planet's wide bands of latitude. Each of these bands has a slightly different chemical make-up and temperature.

Because of this, some of the bands have different colors. The light-colored bands are called "zones." The dark-colored bands are called "belts".

These clouds are different in color, depending on the altitude. Blue clouds are the lowest, followed by brown and white clouds. Red clouds are the highest.

The Great Red Spot is big enough to hold two Earths. It is a high-pressure region where clouds are much higher and colder than in the surrounding areas. Jupiter also has other spots, but they are far smaller.

Jupiter is very bright in the night sky, second only to Venus. The four most important moons of Jupiter, called the Galilean moons, are also quite visible, but you would need a pair of binoculars to see them.

One of the most important moons of Jupiter is Europa. This moon may have water on it, and it is currently closely studied. Another interesting moon of Jupiter is Io, which is the most volcanically active body in the Solar System.

Scientists believe that Jupiter was twice its current size when it was formed. The giant planet is constantly bombarded with asteroids and comets, almost 200 times more than Earth.

Jupiter Notes

Jupiter is the largest planet of the Solar System. It is the fifth planet from the Sun.

Jupiter is a gas giant, and it lacks a true surface. It is made up of about 90% hydrogen and 10% helium.

Jupiter has a faint ring system, and it is second in terms of the number of satellites only to Saturn. It has 79 moons, four of them, the Galilean moons, helped shape our view of the Universe.

Jupiter's moon Europa has many chances of developing life.

Jupiter shrinks 2 centimeters every year because it radiates too much heat.

[2.] Wikipedia

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Jupiter Facts for Kids | Fun & Interesting Information & History

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The planet Jupiter is named after the supreme Roman god. To the ancient Greeks, he was known as Zeus, ruler of the Greek gods, and Mount Olympus. Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the biggest planet of our Solar System.

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The planet Saturn is named after the Roman god of agriculture. In Greek mythology, he is known as Cronus, the father of Zeus (Jupiter). Saturn is the root of the English word "Saturday."

Key Facts & Summary

Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun with the largest planetary rings in the Solar System.

It is the second-largest planet in the Solar System after Jupiter.

Saturn has a radius of 58.232 kilometers / 36.183 miles and a diameter of 120.536 km / 74.897 mi.

The surface area of Saturn is 83 times greater than Earth.

Saturn is the King of the Moons, having a total of 82 confirmed moons. There are probably more out there.

The largest moon of Saturn is named Triton, and it is the second-largest moon in the Solar System after Jupiter's moon Ganymede. Triron is much bigger than even the planet Mercury.

Periodic storms are present on Saturn and they are large enough to be seen from Earth. They are named White Spots.

Saturn doesn't have a solid surface. It is enveloped by swirling gases and liquids the further down you go.

It is possible that Saturn may have a core, it would be at least twice the size of Earth and it would be comprised out of metals like iron, and nickel.

The temperature on Saturn's upper atmosphere is on average at around -175 degrees Celsius / -285 degrees Fahrenheit. This is quite cold for a gas giant at least. However, below its clouds, it gets considerably hotter.

Saturn is the most oblate planet in the Solar System. Its equatorial diameter is greater than the planet's polar diameter. If you look at Saturn through a telescope, it would appear flattened.

Saturn has the lowest density of all the planets. It is lighter than water and if placed on it, the planet would float.

The low density of Saturn is attributed to its composition. The planet is largely made up of gases such as hydrogen and helium.

Saturn's composition together with its atmosphere influences its color, giving it a brownish-yellow appearance.

Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second-largest planet in the Solar System after Jupiter. Saturn is the king of the moons because it has the most moons out of any planet, 82, and it may have even more.

Though it is the most distant of the visible planets - planets that can be seen without the need of a telescope or binoculars - a striking feature has always been noted, its rings.

Saturn is nicknamed the "Ringed Planet" - it has more than 30 ring systems around it. It isn't the only planet with rings, but it definitely has the most beautiful and visible ones.

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The first person to observe Saturn through a telescope was Galileo Galilei in the 1600s. Galileo wasn't sure of what he was seeing, and at first thought the planet had handles, and then he believed he observed three planets, when in fact, they were the rings of Saturn.

Structure and Composition

The rings of Saturn are made out of chunks of ice and rock. Their exact origin is unknown. These rings are very bright and are composed of many small particles that circle Saturn at their own speeds.

These objects range in size from a centime to several meters, and some few are kilometer-sized.

Saturn itself is mostly a ball of hydrogen and helium, and this is why it is known as a gas giant like Jupiter. Like Jupiter, Saturn has bands/clouds but much fainter, some of the spots in those bands are areas where big storms occur.

Time on Saturn

A day on Saturn goes by very fast. It takes only 10.7 hours for Saturn to spin once - a day. A year on Saturn is actually different because it is very far from the Sun.

Saturn circles the Sun once every 29 Earth years - thus one Saturnian year.

Fun Facts:

Galileo Galilei first observed Saturn in 1610, however, his telescope failed to observe the planet's rings. The discovery of the rings was made by Christiaan Huygens in 1659.

Out of the five visible planets ( Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter ), Saturn is the most distant from Earth. It is around 10 times farther away from us than we are from the Sun.

Light takes about 1 hour and 29 minutes to travel from Saturn and then arrive at us.

The presence of ammonia gives Saturn a yellow appearance, ammonia hydrosulfide - orange, and water - white.

Since Saturn's axial tilt is similar to Earth, the southern and northern hemispheres are heated differently. Much of these variations in temperature are horizontal.

The rings of Saturn extend up to 282.000 km / 175.000 mi from the planet.

The particles that make up the rings of Saturn range from the size of small dust to as big a house, or even a mountain.

Saturn's ring system is divided into 7 groups: D ring, C ring, B ring, A ring, F ring, G ring, and E ring. Together, they are as wide as 4.5 Earths put side by side.

You could fit 764 Earths inside Saturn, and almost 1.600 Saturn's could fit into the Sun.

Some believe that the Great Flood that occurred on Earth was caused by a moment in time when Saturn and Jupiter came close to one another.

The winds on Saturn are the second fastest among the Solar System's planets, after Neptune's.

Size and Comparison

Saturn has a radius of 58.232 kilometers / 36.183 miles and a diameter of 120.536 km / 74.897 mi. It is the second-largest planet in the Solar System.

The biggest planet of the Solar System, Jupiter, has 1.2 times the diameter of Saturn. Satururn's diameter is around 10 times bigger than Earth's and Venus's.

It is more than two times bigger than Neptune and Uranus, but when it comes to Mars, it has 17.1 times its diameter. However, Mercury is the smallest planet, and Saturn has more than 23 times its diameter.

Trivia

The rings of Saturn will disappear

Scientists believe that Saturn will lose its rings in about 100 million years. The rings are pulled into Saturn by the planet's gravity as a dusty rain of ice.

These particles are also under the influence of Saturn's magnetic field and the event is often called Ring Rain.

The many names of Saturn

Many cultures across the world have given their own names to Saturn. In Greek, Saturn was known as Phainon while in Hindu astrology, it was known as Shani, a deity that judges the good and bad deeds done in life.

In the Chinese and Japanese cultures, Saturn was designated as the Earth Star.

Visitors of Saturn

Only four spacecraft have visited Saturn:

NASA's Pioneer 11 in 1979

NASA's twin Voyager 1 & 2 in 1980 and 1981

The international Cassini spacecraft in 2004.

The spacecraft Cassini studied Saturn for about 13 years. After it completed its mission, it was intentionally vaporized in Saturn's atmosphere in 2017.

The eeriest radio signals

Saturn has the eeriest radio emissions in the Solar System. The planet's sounds can be found and listened to on the internet, and they are indeed a bit disturbing.

Other Characteristics

Saturn has a thick atmosphere, but the pressure is so strong that it squeezes gas into a liquid. Winds are very powerful in the upper atmosphere and reach incredible speeds. In fact, they are the second fastest winds present on any planet.

Since it is primarily made out of gases and liquid, Saturn isn't very dense. If you could put Saturn on water, it would float. The closest planets to Saturn are Jupiter and Uranus.

The planet is bright enough that it can be seen without a telescope or a pair of binoculars, but if you look at it through a telescope, it will appear squished since its made out of gas and liquid and it spins very quickly.

Saturn's outer moons are also visible through the use of a telescope. The planet has recently gained the title of King of the Moons since now 82 moons have been confirmed. Before this, it was Jupiter who was king.

Though life cannot exist on Saturn because it doesn't have a surface, its moons Titan and Enceladus have internal oceans. They could possibly hold life. Some missions are planned to visit those moons soon.

Scientists believe that Saturn will lose its rings in about 100 million years.

Saturn Notes

1. Saturn is a gas giant primarily made out of gases and liquid. It doesn't have a surface.

2. Saturn is the planet with the most moons, 82, and the planet with the most beautiful ring systems.

3. Saturn was known to the ancients, some of them considered Saturn as bein a star rather than a planet.

4. Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second-largest.

5. Some of the spacecraft that visited Saturn are Pioneer 11, Cassini, and Voyager 1 and 2.

6. The materials that makeup Saturn are lighter than water, and as such, if you would place Saturn in a pond, it would float.

[1.] Wikipedia

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Saturn Facts for Kids | Interesting, Fun, Information & History

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The planet Saturn is named after the Roman god of agriculture. In Greek mythology, he is known as Cronus, the father of Zeus (Jupiter). Saturn is the root of the English word "Saturday." Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun with the largest planetary rings in the Solar System.

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Planet Neptune Overview Dark, cold and whipped by supersonic winds, giant Neptune is the eighth and most distant major planet orbiting our Sun. More than 30 times as far from the Sun as Earth, Neptune is not visible to the naked eye. In 2011, Neptune completed its first 165-year orbit since its discovery.

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The planet Uranus is named after the ancient Greek God of the heavens, the earliest supreme god. He was the father of Cronus / Saturn, which in turn, was the father of Zeus / Jupiter.

Key Facts & Summary

Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun, and the third-largest planet in the Solar System It is the biggest of the ice giants.

Uranus is 2.9 billion kilometers / 1.8 billion miles away from the Sun.

Uranus has a radius of 25.362 km / 15.759 mi, and a diameter of 51.118 km or 31.763 mi.

It comparison to Earth's mass, Uranus has around 14.5 times the mass of Earth. It has the fourth-largest mass in the Solar System.

Uranus rotates in the opposite direction than most planets, from East to West. It is also the only planet known to rotate on its side.

Uranus has the coldest planetary atmosphere in the Solar System. Temperatures are on average at around -224 degrees Celsius / -371 degrees Fahrenheit.

Both Uranus and Neptune share similar compositions. Their chemical compositions differ from the other gas giants Jupiter and Saturn. Because of this, Uranus and Neptune are classified as ice giants rather than gas giants, for easier distinction.

Uranus has a similar atmosphere to Jupiter and Saturn in its primary composition of hydrogen and helium. However, it contains more "ices" such as water, ammonia, methane, and traces of other hydrocarbons.

Uranus has 13 known rings surrounding it but they are difficult to observe.

The reason why Uranus is blue is due to the presence of methane.

Uranus has 27 moons orbiting it. There may be more, all of them are very small.

The biggest moon of Uranus is Titania. It is the eighth largest moon in the Solar System.

Uranus has been visited only once by a spacecraft, namely, Voyager 2.

Another moon of Uranus, Miranda, is one of the strangest objects in the Solar System. It has a very deformed landscape with strange and hard to explain patters.

Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun and the third largest of all the planets in our Solar System. Both Uranus and Neptune are considered ice giants due to their different compositions from the other gas giants Jupiter and Saturn.

Both Uranus and Neptune are blue because they have methane. Uranus is larger in size than Neptune but it is smaller in weight. It has thirteen ring systems and 23 confirmed moons.

Structure and Composition

Every gas giant lacks the presence of a surface. Uranus is made of water, methane, and ammonia fluids above a small rocky center. The thick atmosphere is made of hydrogen and helium like Jupiter and Saturn.

The rings of Uranus can be summarized into two sections. The inner rings and the outer rings. The inner rings are narrow and very faint. The outer rings are brightly colored and easier to see.

The clouds on Uranus are difficult to see ,but they are present. Some of these clouds were observed ,and they revealed huge storms as big as the United States.

Some of the wind speeds recorded on Uranus were among the most powerful ever witnessed in the Solar System.

Time on Uranus

Uranus has a shorter day than Earth. One day only lasts 17 hours. One year on Uranus, or the time it takes for it to circle the Sun once, it the equivalent of 84 Earth years. Having to wait for a birthday cake for 84 years is no fun!

Fun Facts:

1. The biggest moons of Uranus, all of them, have surface areas smaller than the continent of Australia.

2. The rings of Uranus are thought to have formed around 600 million years ago from the collision of moons or other big celestial objects.

3. The rings of Uranus are unique since they are dark and extremely narrow.

4. The intensity of light on Uranus is about 1/400 of that on Earth.

5. In good conditions, Uranus can be seen without binoculars.

6. Umbriel, one of the biggest moons of Uranus, has a very dark surface. It consists mainly of ice and only a fraction of rock.

7. William Herschel, the discoverer of Uranus, first believed that the planet was a comet. However, years later it was confirmed to be a planet.

8. The original name proposed for Uranus was Georgian Sidus - which means Georgian Planet, in honor of King George II, however, the scientific community didn't agree. In a way, we are thankful for that even now.

9. Uranus has a very unusual axial tilt. Many believe that this was caused by a collision with an Earth-sized planet.

10. Uranus is the lightest out of all the four gas giants.

11. The Uranian moons are named for characters created by Alexander Pope and William Shakespeare.

Size and Comparison

Uranus has a radius of 25.362 km / 15.759 mi and a diameter of 51.118 km or 31.763 mi. It is the third-largest planet in the Solar System and the biggest of the ice giants.

Uranus is slightly larger than Neptune, however, it is smaller in mass. In comparison to Earth, Uranus has four times its diameter. When it comes to volume, 63 Earths could fit inside Uranus.

Both Neptune and Uranus have 10 times the diameter of Mercury, the smallest planet in the Solar System. Jupiter, the largest planet in the Solar System, has 2.8 times the diameter of Uranus.

Trivia

A name for a planet, a name for an element

The common tradition after naming a new planet is to name a newly discovered element after the planet, a sort of variant. In the case of Uranus, the chemical element Uranium, discovered in 1789, was named after the newly discovered planet.

The first planet discovered

Uranus is the first planet discovered in modern history. The planet was too dim to be seen by ancient civilizations and as such it remained hidden in the darkness of the sky.

Other Characteristics

Uranus is probably the coldest planet of the Solar System for reasons not yet understood. Something prevents the heat from Uranus's core from reaching the surface.

Uranus is the only planet in the Solar System that spins on its side. It is believed that this was caused by a collision in the distant past. Like Venus, Uranus also spins in the opposite direction than the other planets of the Solar System.

The closest planets to Uranus, its neighbors, are Neptune and Saturn. Uranus has many moons, 27, and they were named after characters from fictional books.

Uranus was discovered in 1781 by William Herschel, a British astronomer. The planet was visited only once, by the spacecraft Voyager 2, in 1986.

Uranus is sometimes visible in the sky. You won't need binoculars or a telescope to see it, but you can only view it on a very clear night sky. Even with binoculars, it would be easy to spot the planet.

Uranus Notes

Uranus is a gas giant like Neptune, Saturn, and Jupiter. However, since it has a different composition, both Uranus and Neptune are termed, ice giants.

Uranus is the coldest planet of the Solar System and the only planet which spins on its side. It also spins in the opposite direction of most planets.

Uranus has 27 moons, but there may be more out there, hidden in its thirteen ring systems.

Though Uranus may seem peaceful, it does have violent storms, and since it doesn't have a surface, life wouldn't be able to develop there.

Uranus is 20 times further away from the Sun than Earth.

In 2033, Uranus will complete its third orbit/year around the Sun since its discovery in 1781.

Uranus has a bluish appearance due to the presence of methane, a type of gas. This is also why Neptune appears blue.

It isn't known what prevents Uranus's heat from the core to reach its surface.

[1.] Wikipedia

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Uranus Facts for Kids | Rotation, Information, Summary & History

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Uranus has a very unique rotation-it spins on its side at an almost 90-degree angle, unlike other planets. Click for more interesting facts & information.

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The planet Uranus is named after the ancient Greek God of the heavens, the earliest supreme god. He was the father of Cronus / Saturn, which in turn, was the father of Zeus / Jupiter.

Key Facts & Summary

Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun, and the third-largest planet in the Solar System It is the biggest of the ice giants.

Uranus is 2.9 billion kilometers / 1.8 billion miles away from the Sun.

Uranus has a radius of 25.362 km / 15.759 mi, and a diameter of 51.118 km or 31.763 mi.

It comparison to Earth's mass, Uranus has around 14.5 times the mass of Earth. It has the fourth-largest mass in the Solar System.

Uranus rotates in the opposite direction than most planets, from East to West. It is also the only planet known to rotate on its side.

Uranus has the coldest planetary atmosphere in the Solar System. Temperatures are on average at around -224 degrees Celsius / -371 degrees Fahrenheit.

Both Uranus and Neptune share similar compositions. Their chemical compositions differ from the other gas giants Jupiter and Saturn. Because of this, Uranus and Neptune are classified as ice giants rather than gas giants, for easier distinction.

Uranus has a similar atmosphere to Jupiter and Saturn in its primary composition of hydrogen and helium. However, it contains more "ices" such as water, ammonia, methane, and traces of other hydrocarbons.

Uranus has 13 known rings surrounding it but they are difficult to observe.

The reason why Uranus is blue is due to the presence of methane.

Uranus has 27 moons orbiting it. There may be more, all of them are very small.

The biggest moon of Uranus is Titania. It is the eighth largest moon in the Solar System.

Uranus has been visited only once by a spacecraft, namely, Voyager 2.

Another moon of Uranus, Miranda, is one of the strangest objects in the Solar System. It has a very deformed landscape with strange and hard to explain patters.

Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun and the third largest of all the planets in our Solar System. Both Uranus and Neptune are considered ice giants due to their different compositions from the other gas giants Jupiter and Saturn.

Both Uranus and Neptune are blue because they have methane. Uranus is larger in size than Neptune but it is smaller in weight. It has thirteen ring systems and 23 confirmed moons.

Structure and Composition

Every gas giant lacks the presence of a surface. Uranus is made of water, methane, and ammonia fluids above a small rocky center. The thick atmosphere is made of hydrogen and helium like Jupiter and Saturn.

The rings of Uranus can be summarized into two sections. The inner rings and the outer rings. The inner rings are narrow and very faint. The outer rings are brightly colored and easier to see.

The clouds on Uranus are difficult to see ,but they are present. Some of these clouds were observed ,and they revealed huge storms as big as the United States.

Some of the wind speeds recorded on Uranus were among the most powerful ever witnessed in the Solar System.

Time on Uranus

Uranus has a shorter day than Earth. One day only lasts 17 hours. One year on Uranus, or the time it takes for it to circle the Sun once, it the equivalent of 84 Earth years. Having to wait for a birthday cake for 84 years is no fun!

Fun Facts:

1. The biggest moons of Uranus, all of them, have surface areas smaller than the continent of Australia.

2. The rings of Uranus are thought to have formed around 600 million years ago from the collision of moons or other big celestial objects.

3. The rings of Uranus are unique since they are dark and extremely narrow.

4. The intensity of light on Uranus is about 1/400 of that on Earth.

5. In good conditions, Uranus can be seen without binoculars.

6. Umbriel, one of the biggest moons of Uranus, has a very dark surface. It consists mainly of ice and only a fraction of rock.

7. William Herschel, the discoverer of Uranus, first believed that the planet was a comet. However, years later it was confirmed to be a planet.

8. The original name proposed for Uranus was Georgian Sidus - which means Georgian Planet, in honor of King George II, however, the scientific community didn't agree. In a way, we are thankful for that even now.

9. Uranus has a very unusual axial tilt. Many believe that this was caused by a collision with an Earth-sized planet.

10. Uranus is the lightest out of all the four gas giants.

11. The Uranian moons are named for characters created by Alexander Pope and William Shakespeare.

Size and Comparison

Uranus has a radius of 25.362 km / 15.759 mi and a diameter of 51.118 km or 31.763 mi. It is the third-largest planet in the Solar System and the biggest of the ice giants.

Uranus is slightly larger than Neptune, however, it is smaller in mass. In comparison to Earth, Uranus has four times its diameter. When it comes to volume, 63 Earths could fit inside Uranus.

Both Neptune and Uranus have 10 times the diameter of Mercury, the smallest planet in the Solar System. Jupiter, the largest planet in the Solar System, has 2.8 times the diameter of Uranus.

Trivia

A name for a planet, a name for an element

The common tradition after naming a new planet is to name a newly discovered element after the planet, a sort of variant. In the case of Uranus, the chemical element Uranium, discovered in 1789, was named after the newly discovered planet.

The first planet discovered

Uranus is the first planet discovered in modern history. The planet was too dim to be seen by ancient civilizations and as such it remained hidden in the darkness of the sky.

Other Characteristics

Uranus is probably the coldest planet of the Solar System for reasons not yet understood. Something prevents the heat from Uranus's core from reaching the surface.

Uranus is the only planet in the Solar System that spins on its side. It is believed that this was caused by a collision in the distant past. Like Venus, Uranus also spins in the opposite direction than the other planets of the Solar System.

The closest planets to Uranus, its neighbors, are Neptune and Saturn. Uranus has many moons, 27, and they were named after characters from fictional books.

Uranus was discovered in 1781 by William Herschel, a British astronomer. The planet was visited only once, by the spacecraft Voyager 2, in 1986.

Uranus is sometimes visible in the sky. You won't need binoculars or a telescope to see it, but you can only view it on a very clear night sky. Even with binoculars, it would be easy to spot the planet.

Uranus Notes

Uranus is a gas giant like Neptune, Saturn, and Jupiter. However, since it has a different composition, both Uranus and Neptune are termed, ice giants.

Uranus is the coldest planet of the Solar System and the only planet which spins on its side. It also spins in the opposite direction of most planets.

Uranus has 27 moons, but there may be more out there, hidden in its thirteen ring systems.

Though Uranus may seem peaceful, it does have violent storms, and since it doesn't have a surface, life wouldn't be able to develop there.

Uranus is 20 times further away from the Sun than Earth.

In 2033, Uranus will complete its third orbit/year around the Sun since its discovery in 1781.

Uranus has a bluish appearance due to the presence of methane, a type of gas. This is also why Neptune appears blue.

It isn't known what prevents Uranus's heat from the core to reach its surface.

[1.] Wikipedia

Image sources:

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Uranus Facts for Kids | Rotation, Information, Summary & History

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Uranus has a very unique rotation-it spins on its side at an almost 90-degree angle, unlike other planets. Click for more interesting facts & information.

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Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun, and has the third-largest diameter in our solar system. It was the first planet found with the aid of a telescope, Uranus was discovered in 1781 by astronomer William Herschel, although he originally thought it was either a comet or a star.

It was two years later that the object was universally accepted as a new planet, in part because of observations by astronomer Johann Elert Bode. Herschel tried unsuccessfully to name his discovery Georgium Sidus after King George III. Instead, the scientific community accepted Bode's suggestion to name it Uranus, the Greek god of the sky, as suggested by Bode.​

Go Farther

Everything you need to know about Uranus.

Uranus In Depth

Ten Things to Know About Uranus
Pop Culture

Uranus is the source of more than a few jokes and witty (and not so witty) puns, but the ice giant and its moons has been a serious destination various fictional stories, and on TV shows such as "Doctor Who." The radioactive element uranium was named after Uranus when it was discovered in 1789, just eight years after the planet was discovered.

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The seventh planet from the sun with the third largest diameter in our solar system, Uranus is very cold and windy.

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Planet Mercury Overview Mercury-the smallest planet in our solar system and nearest to the Sun-is only slightly larger than Earth's Moon. Its surface is covered in tens of thousands of impact craters. From the surface of Mercury, the Sun would appear more than three times as large as it does when viewed from Earth, and [...]

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Today Wonderopolis is talking about . Or is it ? If you know much about (or !), you know that a little clarification is in order!

In ancient Roman mythology, was one of the gods. Specifically, was the Roman version of the Greek god Hermes. As the messenger of the gods, was often as a figure with sandals.

Of course, isn't just a "who." It's also a place. Named after the ancient Roman god, is the name of the planet closest to the Sun. It's also the smallest planet. It orbits the Sun once every 88 days.

looks a lot like Earth's Moon. It has next to no atmosphere , which means it has swings between hot and cold temperatures every day. A single day on can see temperatures as low as -300° F and as high as 800° F!

Since is smaller than Earth, it has less . If you weigh 70 pounds on Earth, you'd weigh only about 27 pounds on ! is of mostly heavy metals, such as . That's only appropriate , since the planet gave rise to the name of one of the chemical elements found on Earth: .

- the chemical - is a metal with the symbol Hg. Hg stands for Hydrargyrum, which means liquid silver. The is sometimes also called quicksilver .

is one of the few elements - and the only metal - that is a liquid at regular room temperature and pressure. It can become a solid if it freezes at about -38° F. It can also become a gas if it boils at a temperature of about 674° F.

A heavy, silvery metal, and its compounds are highly . Pure is rarely found. Instead, most is found in the form of an called (mercuric sulfide or HgS). To extract the , is heated and then its is distilled into liquid .

is used in a wide variety of products today. Some of the most popular include thermometers, barometers, lamps, switches, pesticides, batteries, pigments, and dental products.

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Today Wonderopolis is talking about . Or is it ? If you know much about (or !), you know that a little clarification is in order! In ancient Roman mythology, was one of the gods. Specifically, was the Roman version of the Greek god Hermes.

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Today's Wonder of the Day was inspired by Eliza from Melbourne. Eliza Wonders, " Is planet earth living or nonliving? " Thanks for WONDERing with us, Eliza!

Do you like to learn about the solar system and the other planets that around the Sun? If you've spent much time reading about Mercury, Mars, Saturn, Jupiter, or even -planet Pluto, there's one conclusion you've probably come to: Earth is the place to be!

The conditions on other planets are often too hot, too cold, or simply too to life of any kind. Earth, on the other hand, boasts the perfect conditions for an astounding of life forms.

There are billions of human beings, fish in the sea, and an amazing number of animal species. If you add in the insects, bacteria, , and overwhelming number of different types of plants, it's clear that Earth is full of life.

In the solar system, Earth may be synonymous with life, but is the planet itself alive? That's the question that some scientists have been for several decades now.

In one sense, it's an easy question to . No, planet Earth is not a living like a human being, a badger, a mosquito, or even a tomato plant. That fact, however, hasn't stopped people from treating Earth like a living creature throughout time.

For example, Native Americans and other native peoples around the have long held the belief that Earth is alive. Even the ancient Greeks had a goddess of the Earth that they called Gaia (pronounced "Guy-uh").

The ancient Greek goddess Gaia also lends her name to a hypothesis developed in the 1970s by British chemist James Lovelock and American biologist Lynn Margulis. The Gaia hypothesis, as it's known, is a bit of a , though.

It's not really a scientific hypothesis that can be tested through experimentation. Instead, the Gaia hypothesis is more like a viewpoint, a perspective, or a way of looking at the world. According to Margulis and Lovelock, Earth, rather than acting like an inanimate, non-living object, instead behaves like a living system.

For example, Lovelock and Margulis noted that Earth appears to display a form of self-regulation, otherwise known as homeostasis. Life-sustaining attributes, such as temperature, atmospheric oxygen content, and salinity, have all been maintained with remarkably little variability.

Furthermore, all of those attributes depend in many ways on living things to them. While the Gaia hypothesis didn't attract much support early on, many scientists in recent years have started to look at complex systems on Earth in a new light thanks to the ideas of Lovelock and Margulis.

In essence, many scientists are now beginning to believe that Earth itself and life on Earth have evolved together over time in such a way that each has affected the other every step of the way. Rather than life on Earth simply reacting to the environment, life on Earth also affects and changes the environment around it.

Viewed in this way, Earth can be seen as a huge, complex system in which the environment and living things interact constantly to form a self-regulating . While still not a living organism like a plant, animal, or human being, Earth can nonetheless be seen as a living system that behaves in significant ways like a living organism.

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Today's Wonder of the Day was inspired by Eliza from Melbourne. Eliza Wonders, " Is planet earth living or nonliving? " Thanks for WONDERing with us, Eliza! Do you like to learn about the solar system and the other planets that around the Sun?

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If you had a spaceship and could go anywhere in the , where would you go? Would you hunt for aliens on Mars? Perhaps you'd head to Mercury for a great tan? Or would you head much farther out to visit that beautiful with those fascinating rings? What are we talking about? Saturn, of course!

Whenever students study the planets for the first time, Saturn always seems to students, mainly because of the bright rings that surround the . Saturn isn't the only with rings, though. Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune also have rings, but none of these other planets can the , spectacular rings that surround the second largest , Saturn.

Saturn has seven main groups of rings, each of which is separated by spaces called divisions. Each primary group consists of thousands of smaller rings, called ringlets. The main groups are named alphabetically : A, B, C, D, E, F, and G. However, they were named in the order in which they were discovered, so starting at Saturn and moving outward their order is D,C, B, A, F, G, and E.

Saturn's rings are . The largest groups can span over 170,000 miles in diameter. While they may be , though, they're relatively . Most of the rings are no more than 650 feet thick.

The first astronomer to see Saturn's rings was Galileo in 1610. Ever since, astronomers have been trying to learn more about these unique features of Saturn.

While the rings appear to be solid, they're actually not. Instead, they're made up of a seemingly-infinite number of floating chunks of , , and dust. These particles can vary in size from a grain of sand to pieces the size of a house.

The rings also do not sit still. Instead, they Saturn at very high speeds. They're also not perfect circles. The gravitational pull of Saturn's moons creates a variety of dips and bends in the rings.

For years, astronomers were puzzled by what could have caused Saturn's rings. Today, astronomers believe the particles that make up Saturn's rings likely came from collisions between comets or asteroids and Saturn's many moons. Whereas Earth has one moon, scientists have identified at least 60 moons orbiting Saturn. fragments from these moons have spread out around Saturn to form the patterns seen today.

Astronomers know much more about Saturn and its rings thanks to the ongoing exploration of Saturn by the Cassini spacecraft. Cassini left Earth in 1997 and arrived at Saturn in 2004.

The Cassini spacecraft has been orbiting Saturn ever since, sending a constant stream of pictures and new information back to Earth. Thanks to the Cassini spacecraft, astronomers now believe that Saturn's rings may be as old as the solar system, or approximately four billion years old!

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If you had a spaceship and could go anywhere in the , where would you go? Would you hunt for aliens on Mars? Perhaps you'd head to Mercury for a great tan? Or would you head much farther out to visit that beautiful with those fascinating rings? What are we talking about?

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Venus is the second planet from the Sun and is Earth's closest planetary neighbor. It's one of the four inner, terrestrial (or rocky) planets, and it's often called Earth's twin because it's similar in size and density. These are not identical twins, however - there are radical differences between the two worlds.

Venus has a thick, toxic atmosphere filled with carbon dioxide and it's perpetually shrouded in thick, yellowish clouds of sulfuric acid that trap heat, causing a runaway greenhouse effect. It's the hottest planet in our solar system, even though Mercury is closer to the Sun. Surface temperatures on Venus are about 900 degrees Fahrenheit (475 degrees Celsius) - hot enough to melt lead. The surface is a rusty color and it's peppered with intensely crunched mountains and thousands of large volcanoes. Scientists think it's possible some volcanoes are still active.

Venus has crushing air pressure at its surface - more than 90 times that of Earth - similar to the pressure you'd encounter a mile below the ocean on Earth.

Another big difference from Earth - Venus rotates on its axis backward, compared to most of the other planets in the solar system. This means that, on Venus, the Sun rises in the west and sets in the east, opposite to what we experience on Earth. (It's not the only planet in our solar system with such an oddball rotation - Uranus spins on its side.)

Venus was the first planet to be explored by a spacecraft - NASA's Mariner 2 successfully flew by and scanned the cloud-covered world on Dec. 14, 1962. Since then, numerous spacecraft from the U.S. and other space agencies have explored Venus, including NASA's Magellan, which mapped the planet's surface with radar. Soviet spacecraft made the most successful landings on the surface of Venus to date, but they didn't survive long due to the extreme heat and crushing pressure. An American probe, one of NASA's Pioneer Venus Multiprobes, survived for about an hour after impacting the surface in 1978.

More recent Venus missions include ESA's Venus Express (which orbited from 2006 until 2016) and Japan's Akatsuki Venus Climate Orbiter (orbiting since 2016).

NASA's Parker Solar Probe has made multiple flybys of Venus. On Feb. 9, 2022, NASA announced the spacecraft had captured its f irst visible light images of the surface of Venus from space during its February 2021 flyby.

As Parker Solar Probe flew by Venus in February 2021, its WISPR instrument captured these images, strung into a video, showing the nightside surface of the planet. Credit: NASA/APL/NRL

In June 2021, three new missions to Venus were announced. NASA announced two new missions, and ESA announced one:

VERITAS: NASA's VERITAS, or Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography, and Spectroscopy, will be the first NASA spacecraft to explore Venus since the 1990s. The spacecraft will launch no earlier than December 2027. It will orbit Venus, gathering data to reveal how the paths of Venus and Earth diverged, and how Venus lost its potential to be a habitable world.

DAVINCI: NASA's DAVINCI mission will launch in the late 2020s. After exploring the top of Venus's atmosphere, DAVINCI will drop a probe to the surface. On its hour-long descent, the probe will take thousands of measurements and snap up-close images of the surface. The probe may not survive the landing, but if it does, it could provide several minutes of bonus science.

EnVision: ESA has selected EnVision to make detailed observations of Venus. As a key partner in the mission, NASA is providing the Synthetic Aperture Radar, called VenSAR, to make high-resolution measurements of the planet's surface features.

Go Farther

Everything you need to know about Venus.

Venus In Depth

Ten Things to Know About Venus
Pop Culture

Because it's so bright and easy to see in the sky, Venus has played a role in popular culture since ancient times, inspiring writing and song:

It was called the most beautiful star in the sky by Homer, author of "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey" - two of the oldest and most important works in Greek literature.

More recently, Venus became a popular venue for 20th-century science fiction writers, including Edgar Rice Burroughs ("Pirates of Venus," 1934); Arthur C. Clarke ("Before Eden," 1961); and C.S. Lewis ("Perelandra," 1943).

Australian author Shirley Hazzard won the 1980 National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction with her book, "The Transit of Venus," about two orphaned sisters. American author John Gray used the planet and its masculine counterpart to explain relationships in his 1992 book "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus."

A song called "Venus" was teen idol Frankie Avalon's first No. 1 hit when it topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1959. A decade later, a different song called "Venus" by the Dutch rock band Shocking Blue topped the charts in several countries. In 1986, British pop group Bananarama had a No. 1 hit in the U.S. with their cover of the song.

More recently, Venus has been a backdrop for video games such as Transhuman Space, Battlezone, and Destiny. And in the Disney animated film "The Princess and the Frog," Ray the firefly falls in love with Venus, "the evening star," as he has mistaken it for another firefly.

Kid-Friendly Venus

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Venus is the second planet from the sun and our closest planetary neighbor.

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Mercury is the smallest planet in our solar system and is located closest to the Sun. It has a thin atmosphere and a rocky surface with many craters. Mercury has a very slow rotation, taking 59 Earth days to complete one day. It also has a high-temperature range, with scorching hot temperatures during the day and freezing cold temperatures at night. The planet has no moons and no rings.

Mercury Facts for Kids

Closest planet to the Sun.

Smallest planet in the solar system.

Has no atmosphere to sustain life.

Named after the Roman messenger god.

One day lasts 59 Earth days.

Surface temperatures range from -290°F to 800°F.

Has no moons or rings.

The largest known crater is the Caloris Basin.

Orbits the Sun in just 88 Earth days.

Made mostly of iron and nickel.

Space Missions to Mercury

1974-1975 Mariner 10

The spacecraft orbited Mercury three times and mapped around half of the surface of Mercury. During the Mariner 10 mission, it discovered evidence that Mercury has a magnetic field.

Comparisons have shown that the magnetic field is only around 1% of Earth's, but it's highly active, being responsible for the solar wind tornados on the surface of Mercury.

The images that Mariner took covered around 45% of the surface of Mercury and prompted interest in launching later missions.

2004 Messenger Probe

The MESSENGER Probe was a robot spaceship sent by NASA to study Mercury. It launched in 2004 and took 6.5 years to reach the planet. MESSENGER was the first probe to orbit Mercury, and it did so for four years.

It sent back lots of data and pictures, helping scientists learn about Mercury's surface, thin atmosphere, and the ice at its poles. In 2015, after running out of fuel, MESSENGER crashed into Mercury, still sending back valuable information until the end.

2018 BepiColombo

The ESA (European Space Agency) launched BepiColombo as part of their first mission for the exploration of Mercury.

Even with the intense heat and temperature fluctuations, there are still locations on Mercury that are permanently shaded from the Sun's heat. In 2012, NASA's spacecraft MESSENGER found water ice in the craters around the north pole of Mercury.

There may be other areas that have water ice, however, the orbit of MESSENGER didn't include probing the southern pole. It's believed that meteorites or comets may be responsible for delivering ice to these locations or water vapor may have been outgassed from the interior of the planet and then out to the poles.

How did Mercury get its Name

It's thought that many civilizations recognized the planet Mercury as far back as 5,000 years. It was named after the Roman messenger god who was known for moving fast because the planet orbited the sun more quickly than other planets.

For many years it was believed that Earth was the center of our solar system with both the sun and other planets orbiting Earth.

The Greek philosopher, Heraclitus was the first to indicate that the Sun was the center, with both Mercury and Venus orbiting it instead of Earth.

Formation:

Planets are created when gravity pulls dust and swirling gas together. Mercury was formed around 4.5 billion years ago and became the small planet that is closest to our sun. It's considered to be a "terrestrial planet" because Mercury has a central core, a rock mantle, and a solid crust.

Structure and Surface:

After Earth, Mercury is the second densest planet in our solar system. Mercury's core is metallic with a radius of around 1,289 mi/2,074 km, which is about 85% of the planet's entire radius.

Scientists believe that they have found evidence that shows that part of the metallic core is molten or liquid. The outer shell or mantle and crust is around 250 mi/400 km thick.

When you stare at the surface of Mercury, you can't help but realize that it resembles that of our moon. The surface is covered with a lot of craters that that were caused by collisions with comets and meteoroids.

We have named a lot of these craters for famous people, including authors, musicians, and artists. Two of the craters are named for Dr. Seuss, famous author of children's books and Alvin Ailey, a pioneer in dance.

The crater Caloris Basin is the result of an asteroid around 60 mi wide hitting Mercury; large enough to fit the state of Texas. It's almost 960 miles wide and scientists believe that the impact could be compared to 1 trillion 1-megeton bombs going off.

It's thought that an impact of this magnitude may have been the cause of Mercury's odd spin.

Mercury's surface is covered with what are called "lobe-shaped" cliffs. These can reach up to a mile high and run hundreds of miles throughout Mercury. The cliffs were created billions of years ago as Mercury went through a cooling process.

A majority of the surface of Mercury would look like a kind of greyish-brown color to the human eye. There are bright streaks that are called "crater rays," caused when a comet or asteroid hits the surface.

The intense energy that is released upon impact not only digs a huge hole in the ground while crushing a large amount of rock at the impact point.

When some of the crushed rock and material is thrown away from the impact crater it falls to the surface so that it creates a kind of "ray" effect.

The crushed rock particles are a lot more reflective than the bigger pieces, so that these rays appear to be brighter. Over time, solar-wind particles and dust in the environment will cause the rays to darken a bit.

The planet Mercury is the closest to the sun and zips around its orbit very quickly. It has a very thin atmosphere, but not enough to reflect the sun's intense heat.

The lack of a significant atmosphere also doesn't protect it from the impacts of the many space objects. The surface of Mercury shows evidence of impacts, with craters of all sizes.

Since there isn't any weather or seasons, scientists can observe the craters and try to learn about the history of Mercury.

Mercury isn't just extremely hot, it is also extremely cold. The high 840 degree temperatures are reached during the day but during the night, the surface temperature drops to -290 degrees F (- 180 degrees C).

It's thought that Mercury may have water ice deep inside the craters at its south and north poles, but only within those areas that are in a constant shadow.

The permanent shadow would be cold enough to keep water ice, even when the rest of the planet is intensely hot.

Atmosphere. Magnetosphere, and Moon Status:

While some planets do have an atmosphere, Mercury doesn't have one. Instead it has a thin "exosphere" which consists of atoms that are created with meteoroids hit the surface and the solar wind catches them and blasts them upwards.

The exosphere of Mercury is made up of mostly oxygen, sodium, hydrogen, helium, and potassium.

Mercury's magnetic field is relative to the equator of the planet. While it has just 1% of the strength of our Earth's magnetosphere, it does interact with the solar wind magnetic field so that it can create really intense magnetic tornadoes.

These storms funnel the hot solar wind plasma down to the planet's surface. Once the ions hit the surface, they imbalance the atoms that are neutrally charged and quickly send them back into the sky.

Mercury doesn't have a moon or rings.

Mercury Statistics:

View on Maps: google.com/maps/space/mercury

Moons: None

Distance from Sun: 35.98 million mi

Radius: 1,516 mi

Diameter: 4,879 km

Orbital period: 88 days

Mass: 3.285 × 10^23 kg (0.055 M⊕)

Surface Temperature: -173 to 427°C

Number of Moons: None

First Record: 14th century BCE by Assyrian astronomers

Could Life Exist on Mercury?

The solar radiation and temperatures on Mercury are not conducive to life as we know it. The planet has too many extremes for organisms to be able to adapt to.

Interesting Information:

Mercury is not only the planet that is the smallest in our solar system, it's also the planet that is closest to the sun. When you look at Mercury's size you will see that it's only a little bit larger than the Earth's moon.

If you were standing on Mercury's surface, the sun would look three times as large as it does when you see it from Earth, and the sunlight would be seven times brighter.

You would think that being the closest to the sun, Mercury would be the hottest planet in our solar system, however, that's not the case. Due to the dense atmosphere, Venus holds the title of being the hottest planet in our solar system.

Due to Mercury's odd elliptical orbit and slow speed of rotation, both sunrise and sunset would appear strange to us. If we watched the sunrise, it would appear to rise, set and then rise up again.

The same thing happens during sunset. It's difficult to look directly at Mercury from Earth because it's so close to the sun. However, 13 times every century, an event called a "transit" occurs where we can watch as Mercury passes across the face of the sun.

Important Events:

1631: Galileo Galilei and Thomas Harriot had invented a new telescope that gave them the ability to observe Mercury.

1965: Astronomers use radar to discover that the previous theory of the same side of Mercury constantly facing the sun was incorrect. The radar proved that Mercury rotates three times for every two orbits.

1974-1975: The Mariner 10 mission sent images back to Earth of around 43% of the surface of Mercury as it accomplished three flybys.

1991: Scientist made use of Earth-based radar to discover that Mecury's shadow areas in their craters within the polar-regions showed signs of permanently locked ice.

2008-2009: The MESSENGER probe accomplishes three flybys of Mercury.

2011: The MESSENGER probe orbits around Mercury, sending an incredible array of images and compositional data about the planet.

2015: The MESSENGER probe was sent to Mercury to crash into the surface. Scientists made sure that all of the propellant was expended prior to the crash as the mission was ended.

2018: The BepiColombo mission was launched by the European Space Agency.

Facts about Mercury:

Mercury may be the closest planet to the sun but it experiences temperature changes that are the most extreme of any planet in the solar system, including dropping to -275 F/-170 C.

Mercury is only slightly larger than the Earth's moon.

Mercury travels around the sun more quickly than any of the other planets in the solar system.

One Mercury year is equal to only 88 Earth days.

The core at Mercury's center is mostly made up of iron and takes up about 75% of the planet's radius.

Mercury does have a very thin atmosphere called an exosphere.

Mercury seems to have a stream of particles that appear to expand out from the surface giving it a look like it has "tails."

Pop Culture:

While many of our planets have played a part in legend and stories, Mercury seems to have been a focus of our collective imaginations.

There are a lot of science fiction writers that have used the smallest planet in our solar system for inspiration for their novels.

The list of authors include: Isaac Asimov, C.S. Lewis, Ray Bradbury, H.P. Lovecraft, and Arthur C. Clarke. TV and movie writers also seemed to be enthralled with the little planet as part of their scripts.

The animated television show "Invader Zim," has Mercury being changed into a giant ship prototype spaceship by an extinct group of Martians.

In film called "Sunshine", released in 2007, a spacecraft called the "Icarus II" orbits around Mercury to meet up with the Icarus I.

Even the comic strip "Calvin and Hobbes" has mention of Mercury. In one of the series Calvin and his friend Susie give a class presentation about Mercury, and Calvin fills the presentation with very questionable information such as: "The planet Mercury was named after a Roman god with winged feet," says Calvin.

"Mercury was the god of flowers and bouquets, which is why today he is a registered trademark of FTD florists. Why they named a planet after this guy, I can't imagine."
https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/overview/ https://www.space.com/27013-strange-mercury-facts-photos.html

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Mercury Facts for Kids - Interesting Facts about Planet Mercury

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It's thought that many civilizations recognized the planet Mercury as far back as 5,000 years. It was named about the Roman messenger god that was known for moving fast

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Introduction:

Each time you look up to the sky and see a star you are looking at a sun in another galaxy. If you were on another planet looking back at our solar system, you would see our sun as a star.

It's believed that every sun has planets orbiting it. Our Milky Way galaxy has more planets than it has stars. In our solar system we have eight planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars are the inner rocky planets.

Jupiter and Saturn are the outer gas giants. Uranus and Neptune are the outer ice giants. In recent years, astronomers have designed a new class called the "dwarf planets."

These are smaller worlds, not quite big enough to be considered a standard planet, and include Pluto. Venus is the second planet from the sun.

Venus Statistics:

View on Maps: google.com/maps/space/venus

Distance from Sun: 67.24 million mi

Radius: 3,760 mi

Diameter: 7,520.8 mi

Orbital period: 225 days

Mass: 4.867 × 10^24 kg 0.815 M⊕

Surface Temperature: 462 °C

Number of Moons: None

First Recorded: 17th century BCE by Babylon astronomers

How did Venus get its name:

Throughout history, Venus was one of the planets that many civilizations recognized. Named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty, it was also known by the Greeks as Aphrodite. All of the planets in our solar system are named after male gods or mythological creatures, with the exception of Venus.

It is the only planet named after a female and it's thought that it was because it is the brightest planet.

At one time, some of the astronomers in the ancient past thought that Venus was actually two stars.

This was due to the fact that it appeared as both the morning and the evening star. Because it was so bright, astronomers assumed that the planet itself must be beautiful.

However, once space exploration began, scientists realized that the planet had a horrible environment.

Many missions have been sent to Venus but it's almost impossible to get to the surface of the planet due to its extremely hot temperatures.

Formation and Rotation:

Around 4.5 billion years ago our solar system finally settled into its current configuration. What this means is that there were quite a few planets that were relocating from one place to another.

Scientists have a theory that we may have had other planets that were either thrown out into the universe or that collided and merged to create the current planets.

Venus formed when swirling gas and dust was pulled by gravity. Venus is a "terrestrial planet" and therefore has a central core, a rocky mantle and a solid crust.

Because they share similar gravity, composition, density, mass, and size, Earth and Venus have often been referred to as "twins." However, those are the only similarities between the two planets.

Venus' heat, combined with the inner pressures have given the planet over 1,600 volcanoes. While scientists think that most are dormant, there are some that may still be active.

Venus has the honor of being the only single planet in our solar system, other than our Earth, to have volcanic activity and the Venus has the most volcanoes. This makes it the single planet with the most volcanoes in the solar system.

Due to its slow rotation on its axis, one day on Venus takes 243 Earth-days to complete one rotation.

It is thought that billions of years ago, Venus might have had a similar climate as the one on Earth. Scientists think that there may have been large amounts of water, even big enough to create oceans on Venus.

However, the high temperatures on Venus that produce the extreme greenhouse effect, allowed the water to boil off. This left a planet that is too hostile and hot to sustain life as we know it.

Structure and Surface:

There are a lot of similarities between Venice and Earth, and one of the most notable is its structure. Venus has a 2,000 mi/3,200 km radius iron core.

Above the core is a mantle that consists of hot rock similar to lava that churns slowly due to the interior heat of the planet.

The surface is a bulging thin rock crust that moves as the mantle shifts. This movement creates the volcanoes.

Looking at Venus from out in space it appears as a very bright white color. This tone is due to the fact that Venus is covered in a thick layer of clouds that reflect the sunlight.

Peering through the clouds shows that the surface is covered in rocks and volcanoes. The rocks are various shades of grey and appear to be similar to those on Earth.

However, the thick atmosphere causes the sunlight and if you were standing on Venus, the rocks would look orange.

Venus is covered in valleys, mountains and tens of thousands of volcanoes. The tallest mountain on Venus is Maxwell Montes, standing over 20,000 ft/8.8 km high.

It is similar to Earth's highest mountain, Mount Everest. The landscape is rather dusty and the temperatures on the surface can reach as high as 880 degrees F/471 degrees C.

Scientists believe that the surface of Venus was completely changed as volcanic activity occurred 300-500 million years ago. Venus has two highland areas:

Ishtar Terra in the northern polar region, about the size of Australia; and Aphrodite Terra near the equator, about the size of South America. Aphrodite Terra is around 6,000 mi/10,000 km.

There are an enormous number of craters on Venus, however, none seem to be smaller than 0.9-1.2 mi (1.5-2 km) across.

The craters are caused by meteoroids striking the surface and since the smaller ones burn up in the dense atmosphere, only the biggest ones make it through to hit the surface.

Atmosphere. Magnetosphere, and Moon Status:

There are two broad layers of atmosphere on Venus including one layer that is a cloud bank covering the entire plant, and another that includes everything that is below the cloud bank.

The consistency of the clouds is very dense and they are made up of sulfuric acid and Sulphur dioxide. Between the mixtures and density, the clouds reflect around 60% of the sunlight that hits Venus back out into space.

Even though it's the second planet closest to the sun, it is the single hottest planet within our solar system.

The atmosphere of Venus is mostly made up of carbon dioxide and has clouds of sulfuric acid droplets. This thick atmosphere is responsible for trapping the heat of the sun and creates the intensely hot surface temperature of up to 880 degrees F/470 degrees C.

The atmosphere itself consists of many layers and the temperatures vary within each layer. Around 30 mi from the surface, the clouds have about the same temperature as we find on Earth's surface.

If you could stand on the ground on Venus, you would look around and it would appear like a very overcast and hazy day on Earth, however, due to the heavy atmosphere, you would feel like you were 1 mi/1.6 km under water.

One of the astounding things about Venus is that as it moves forward in its orbit around the sun combined with a backwards axis rotation, the clouds in the top level whip around the planet every 4 Earth days at hurricane-force winds of 224 mi/360 km per hour.

The lightning bursts in the atmosphere light up the clouds. The closer you get to the surface, the slower the cloud speed becomes so that those closest to the surface are only moving at a few mph.

The slow rotation of Venus makes the magnetic field a lot weaker than on Earth. Even though Earth and Venus share similar size and seem to have similarly-sized iron cores, Earth's faster rotation allows us a stronger magnetosphere.

Venus doesn't have any moons or rings.

Could Life Exist on Venus?

There have been no humans that have visited Venus, but there have been a few spacecraft that have been sent to the surface. Due to the extreme heat, the spacecraft have not survived very long as they overheat all of the electronics on the crafts.

These high temperatures are the reason that we don't believe that life could exist on the surface, however there are some scientists that speculate that there may be a possibility of life in the top cloud layers of the atmosphere of Venus. These upper cloud layers have less extreme temperatures.

Interesting Information:

As the second planet from the Sun, Venus is our closest neighbor in our solar system. Although very similar in size and structure to our Earth, Venus spins more slowly and in the opposite direction than most of the planets in our solar system.

Venus has a thick atmosphere that traps the heat from the sun giving it a "runaway greenhouse effect." It is the hottest planet in the solar system with surface temperatures hot in enough to melt lead and other metals.

The few glimpses that we have had of Venus below its dense clouds have shown badly deformed mountains and volcanoes.

Scientists have noted a rather odd thing about the rotation of Venus. It's rotation is in the opposite directions of most of the other planets, with only Uranus and Venus rotating clockwise.

This is called a "retrograde rotation," and is thought to have occurred when collisions happened back in its history of formation.

A collision with a major object could have been strong enough to change the rotations of the planets.

Venus is the only planet in our solar system named for a female, and to do this honor justice, almost all of the surface features on Venus carry the name for both real and mythological women of Earth.

There is a volcanic crater named for Sacajawea, the Native American woman who played a key role in guiding the Lewis and Clark exploration in America, and a deep canyon is called "Diana," after the Roman goddess of the hunt.

Space Missions to Venus:

Akatsuki 2010: The Venus Climate Orbiter mission (PLANET-C), or "AKATSUKI", is studying Venus' atmospheric circulation.

Venus Express 2005: The (ESA) European Space Agency's Venus Express is studying the Venus atmosphere including the surface to the ionosphere.

Galileo 1989: The orbiter included ten science instruments as well as an atmospheric probe to study Jupiter, its moons, and the magnetosphere as it orbited.

Magellan 1989: Accomplished its mission as the first to ever arrive and map Venus' entire surface.

Vega 2 1984: The sister spacecraft to Vega 1, with an almost identical mission as Vega 1.

Vega 1 1984: The most ambitious deep space mission by the Soviets with twin spacecraft designed with redundant mission goals.

Venera 16 1983: Soviet twins Venera 15 and 16 orbiters, the mission was to use radar to create a detailed map of the surface of Venus with a resolution of 1-2 km or around 1 mile.

Venera 15 1983: Soviet twins Venera 15 and 16 orbiters, the mission was to use radar to create a detailed map of the surface of Venus with a resolution of 1-2 km or around 1 mile.

Venera 14 1981: Identical to its twin, Venera 13, the Soviet mission of the spacecraft was carried out as it had three corrections midcourse on its way to Venus.

Venera 13 1981: Designed similarly to the previous Soviet twin missions, Venera 13 and 14 were spacecraft to accomplish Venus flybys.

Venera 12 1978: Soviet mission with a twin Venera 11, to accomplish a flyby and then a lander to explore the ionosphere, atmosphere, and surface of Venus.

Important Events:

On January 31, 2019, a research group from Japan identified a huge streak structure amidst the Venus clouds.

Using the observations from the Japanese spacecraft, Akatuski, the team used large-scale climate simulations to discover the origins of the structure.

Facts about Venus for Kids:

Venus has over 1,600 volcanoes, the most of any planet within the solar system.

It takes Venus 243 Earth days to make one complete rotation.

Compared to Earth's 365 days, it takes Venus only 224.7 Earth days to make one rotation around the sun.

The surface of Venus is so hot that it would melt lead and scientists call it a "runaway greenhouse effect."

If you could stand on the surface of Venus, the air pressure would be so extreme, that it would be like being under Earth's ocean half a mile down.

The only planets that we can visibly see cross in front of the sun called "transits" are Mercury and Venus.

Venus has wind storms that can get up to 450 mph/724 kph, which is faster than the largest Earth tornado.

Pop Culture:

Venus was named after the goddess of love and beauty, and the name has become synonymous in our society with "women."

An example of this was the book was written in 1992 by author John Gray, entitled "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus," where Gray referenced the two planets as a relationship guide for men and women.

Early 20th century science fiction writers also loved using Venus as a popular destination in their books.

This was, of course, before science had discovered how horrible the surface and atmosphere was.

In today's video games, Venus has been used as a backdrop for such games as Transhuman Space, Battlezone, and Destiny.

Even Disney fans will remember the animated film "The Princess and the Frog," where the firefly, Ray falls in love with Venus, "the evening star", whom he mistakes as another firefly.
https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/venus/overview/ https://www.space.com/15988-venus-planet-weird-facts.html

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Venus Facts for Kids - Interesting Facts about Planet Venus

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Venus was one of the planets that many civilizations recognized. Named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty

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Introduction:

Each time you look up to the sky and see a star you are looking at a sun in another galaxy. If you were on another planet looking back at our solar system, you would see our sun as a star.

It's believed that every sun has planets orbiting it. Our Milky Way galaxy has more planets than it has stars. In our solar system we have eight planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars are the inner rocky planets. Jupiter and Saturn are the outer gas giants. Uranus and Neptune are the outer ice giants.

In recent years, astronomers have designed a new class called the "dwarf planets." These are smaller worlds, not quite big enough to be considered a standard planet, and include Pluto. Earth is the third planet from the sun.

Earth Statistics:

Population: 7.53 billion (2017) Trending, World Bank

View on Maps: google.com/maps/space/earth

Distance from Sun: 92.96 million mi

Radius: 3,959 mi

Polar Diameter: 12,714 km

Orbital Period: 265.24 days

Mass: 5.972 × 10^24 kg

Number of Moons: 1

Age: 4.543 billion years

How did Earth get its name:

It's believed that the name "Earth" is around 1,000 years old. If you notice, except for Earth, all of the planets in our solar system are named after Roman and Greek gods and goddesses. One idea of the source of the name is that the word "Earth" is an old Germanic word that really just means "the ground."

Another thought is that the name "Earth" is derived from the Old English word "ertha" as well as the Anglo-Saxon word "erda", which means soil or ground.

Earth is the only known planet to support life and was formed around 4.54 billion years ago.

Astronomers of ancient times thought that the Earth was the center of the universe and the sun as well as all of the planets orbited around Earth.

They also thought that the Earth was static and never changed or moved. This idea was part of many cultures for over 2,000 years. It wasn't until 1543 when Copernicus created his published work of the Sun-centered Solar System model that fellow scientists realized that the sun was the center of the solar system and Earth revolved around it.

Formation:

About 4.5 billion years ago, our solar system settled into the layout that we see today. It's believed that Earth formed when gravity began pulling dust and swirling gas together, and the Earth became the third planet from the sun. Earth is one of the terrestrial planets, which means it has a central core, rocky mantle, and a crust that is solid.

Our Earth orbits the sun every 23.9 hours and it takes 365.23 days to complete an entire trip around the sun. The axis of rotation of the Earth is tilted 23.4 degrees and it's this tilt that gives us our seasonal cycles every year.

Structure and Surface:

The Earth is made up of four main layers, beginning with the planet's inner core which is enveloped by the outer core, then the mantle, and finally the crust. The inner core is around 759 mi/1,221 km in radius and is a solid sphere of nickel and iron metals.

The temperature of the inner core is as high as 9,800 degrees F/5,400 degrees C. Surrounding the inner core is the outer core, which is 1,400 mi/2,300 km thick. The outer core is made up of iron and nickel fluids.

Wedged in between the outer core and the crust is the mantle which is the thickest of all of the layers. This is a hot, thick mixture of molten rock that has the consistency of caramel and is around 1,800 mi/2,900 km thick.

The Earth's crust is the outermost layer and is an average of about 19 mi/30 km deep on land. The ocean's bottom has a thinner crust and it extends about 3 mi/5 km from the floor of the sea to the top of the mantle.

Just like Venus and Mars, Earth has mountains, volcanoes, and valleys. The "lithosphere" of the Earth includes both the oceanic and continental crust as well as the upper mantle.

It is divided into huge plates called "tectonic plates" that are constantly in motion. This movement causes the plates to collide to create mountains, split or separate, or rub against each other and create earthquakes.

The Earth has an ocean that covers almost 70% of the surface of the planet. The average depth of the ocean is around 2.5 mi/4 km and contains 97% of the water on the Earth.

Almost every one of the volcanoes on Earth is hidden under these oceans. The Mauna Kea volcano in Hawaii is taller from the base to the top than Mount Everest, but a majority of the volcano is underwater.

The longest mountain range on Earth is also underwater, at the bottom of the Atlantic and Arctic oceans. This mountain range is four times longer than the Rockies, Andes, and Himalayas all combined.

The land masses that make up 30% of the Earth's surface are incredibly varied. Land has continents, islands, and other land masses as well as sources of fresh water.

Many scientists believe that water was delivered to the Earth by comets and asteroids as it was forming and that much of the water was inside the planet and then brought up to the surface during volcanic activity.

Atmosphere. Magnetosphere, and Moon Status:

Earth's atmosphere consists of 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen and trace amounts of other gases including carbon dioxide, argon, and neon. We give credit to the plant life on Earth for generating the large amount of oxygen.

During the photosynthesis process, plants consume carbon dioxide and give off oxygen. Earth's Ozone layer consists of a special kind of oxygen that helps to absorb the harmful UV rays from the sun.

The Ozone layer protects Earth and life from the extremes of solar radiation. Our atmosphere is also responsible for both short-term and long-term weather effects on the Earth.

The atmosphere acts as a protective barrier, shielding the Earth from the impacts of meteoroids as many burn up before they have a chance to hit Earth's surface.

The magnetic field of Earth is incredibly powerful and also plays a big part in protecting our planet from the effects of solar wind. It's though that the Earth's magnetic field is due to the planet's core, which is made up of nickel-iron, combined with the fast rotation of the Earth.

It's important to realize that the rotation of the Earth is slowing down at nearing 17 milliseconds for every 100 years. The slowing down process will have an effect on the length of our days, however, it will take around 140 million years before we see a day change from 24 hours to 25 hours.

The solar wind distorts the magnetic field so that if you looked at it in space it would be a teardrop shape. The solar wind is a constant stream of charged particles that the sun ejects.

When these particles are trapped in the magnetic field of the Earth they collide with the molecules in the air above the Earth's magnetic poles. This collusion causes the molecules in the air to glow and this is known as the Aurora Borealis or northern and southern lights.

It's the Earth's magnetic field that causes the compass needles to point to the North Pole, no matter which way that you turn. However, the magnetic polarity of the Earth doesn't always stay the same, and the magnetic field can flip.

Scientists studying geological records have seen that there is a magnetic reversal every 400,000 years or so. As far as anyone knows, this flip hasn't caused harm to Earth's life, and another one isn't likely to happen for at least another thousand years.

It's guessed that when a flip does occur, compass needles will point in many different directions for a few centuries until everything settles down; and then the compasses will point south instead of north.

Earth has one moon and no rings.

Could Life Exist?

If you look around our Earth you can see that we have an incredible amount of life that exists on both the land and within the waterways and seas. Scientists have always based our definition of "life" as the carbon-based type that we have around us, including ourselves.

They established three rules that are required for life: liquid water, some source of energy such as our sun, and a source of food. However, in the past number of years experts have discovered Earth lifeforms that live outside of these ideas.

These lifeforms live in conditions that were previously thought to be uninhabitable, and they are called "extremophiles."

Scientists believe that life not only developed but adapted and thrived on Earth because of our uniquely perfect distance from the sun and the gravitational effects that the moon had on the planet.

Earth isn't too hot and isn't too cold, and this is often called the "Goldilocks distance." Our moon has created the tides on Earth, which in turn has helped life to develop.

The rotation of the moon around the Earth has caused an effect that is called being "tidally locked" so that the orbit and rotation periods are the same. This lock is what causes the moon to always be facing the same way to Earth.

The size of the Earth and the distance from the sun is critical to life on Earth. The Earth is the largest of the terrestrial planets at 3,959 mi/6,371 km radius, and the fifth largest overall planet in our solar system.

Earth is an average distance of 93 million mi/150 million km from the sun or one AU (astronomical unit). An AU is the distance from the Sun to the Earth. It takes around eight minutes for light that leaves the sun to reach the Earth.

Space Visits:

We have thousands of satellites orbiting the Earth to study specific areas as well as the entire Earth as a whole. These satellites observe the atmosphere, glaciers, oceans, and the solid earth.

Many of these satellites are also communication satellites, bringing us our cable television and our cell phone service.

Facts about Earth for Kids:

The shape of the Earth is actually closer to a squashed sphere. It's fatter in the middle near the equator where gravity pushes to create a bulge.

Even though you might think you are standing still, the Earth is turning. The speed at the equator is around 1,000 mph.

The Earth is also moving through the solar system at around 67,000 mph/107,826 kph.

Earth is constantly recycling its material through tectonic movement which drags surface rocks back down below the surface to become magma and then is spewed back out from volcanoes.

Earthquakes are the result of tectonic plate movement on the planet. The largest earthquake recorded in the U.S. was in 2016 in Alaska, registered at 9.2 on the Richter Scale; with the largest global earthquake recorded in 1960 in Chile, registering 9.5 on the Richter Scale.

The hottest recorded temperature location on the Earth is in El Azizia, Libya with temperatures hitting 136 degrees F/57.8 degrees C in 1922.

The coldest temperature location is in Antarctica with temperatures reaching -100 degrees F/-73 degrees

Pop Culture:

Discovering the nature of our home planet has been the topic of many books, movies, and television shows.

The well-known movie (and its sequels) "Planet of the Apes" occurs in a future where our astronauts find that intelligent apes have taken over the world and the primitive animals are the human beings.

The long-running television series and its remake "Battlestar Galactica" include a band of a war against the highly evolved cylon robots, while they search to find the long lost colony of Earth.

In many tales, writers have left the Earth as destroyed or abandoned. The television series "Firefly" and the book and film adaptation "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" are two such stories. "Titan A.E.," the animated feature shows Earth's destruction by a species of aliens, however, a well-placed planet builder then recreates the planet and all of the species that live on it.

Earth has remained as a base for other space exploration stories, including the iconic "Star Trek" series. Originally created by Gene Roddenberry, Star Trek uses Earth as a leading member of The Federation of Planets and the many spaceships that head out to explore galaxies and beyond.
https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/earth/overview/ https://www.livescience.com/19102-amazing-facts-earth.html livingcosmos

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Earth Facts for Kids - Interesting Facts about Planet Earth

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Earth is around 1,000 years old. If you notice, except for Earth, all of the planets in our solar system are named after Roman and Greek gods and goddesses

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Introduction:

Each time you look up to the sky and see a star you are looking at a sun in another galaxy. If you were on another planet looking back at our solar system, you would see our sun as a star.

It's believed that every sun has planets orbiting it. Our Milky Way galaxy has more planets than it has stars.

In our solar system we have eight planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars are the inner rocky planets.

Jupiter and Saturn are the outer gas giants. Uranus and Neptune are the outer ice giants.

In recent years, astronomers have designed a new class called the "dwarf planets." These are smaller worlds, not quite big enough to be considered a standard planet, and include Pluto. Mars is the fourth planet from the sun.

Mars Statistics:

View on Maps: google.com/maps/space/mars

Distance from Sun: 141.6 million mi

Radius: 2,106 mi

Polar Diameter: 6,752 km

Orbital Period: 6.42 x 10^23 kg (10.7% Earth)

Mass: 6.39 × 10^23 kg 0.107 M⊕

Surface pressure: -153 to 20 °C

Moons: (2) Phobos, Deimos

First Recorded: 2nd Millennium BCE by Egyptian astronomers

How did Mars get its name:

Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and is one of the terrestrial planets. It has a distinctive red color and was therefore associated with battles and war and named after the Roman god of war.

The surface of Mars is a reddish-brown color due to the rusting process of the surface minerals. Another name for Mars is "The Red Planet." Mercury is the smallest planet in our solar system and Mars is the second smallest planet.

Other civilizations throughout history have also named the planet due to its color. The Ancient Egyptians called Mars "Her Desher," which translates to "the red one."

Today we often call Mars the "Red Planet" due to the iron minerals on the surface. It's the iron in the Martian dirt that has oxidized or rusted that causes it to look red.

Formation:

Around 4.5 billion years ago our solar system settled into the configuration that we see today.

Mars was formed when the swirling gas and dust coalesced due to gravitational pull and created the fourth plant from the sun.

As we explore other solar systems we see that many of their larger gas giants are those closer to the inner orbits of the sun and our solar system differs as we have terrestrial planets that are closer.

Mars is a terrestrial planet with a central core, rocky mantle, and a solid crust.

Structure and Surface:

The core at Mars' center is very dense and is between 930 and 1,300 mi/1,500 to 2,100 km in radius.

The core is made up of iron, nickel and sulfur. Surrounding the core is the planet's rocky mantle which is between 770-1,170 mi/1,240-1,880 km thick.

Above the rocky mantle is the crust made up of iron, magnesium, aluminum, calcium, and potassium. The crust is between 6-30 mi/10-50 km deep.

The Mars surface is divided by the hemisphere of the planet and is in two distinct types of features.

Thanks to the Mars Rovers we have been able to see the smooth look of the northern hemisphere and can see that it doesn't have very many craters.

However, the southern hemisphere is the exact opposite, with a lot more craters as well as highlands. The craters on Mars range in sizes but it also has the biggest known crater in the solar system, called Valles Marineris.

You could stretch the crater from the U.S. West Coast all the way to the East Coast. Mars is also home to the largest known volcano in the solar system called Olympus Mons.

One of the most distinctive features on Mars is its "channels." These channels look like they could have been made by running water.

Mars actually has many more colors than just the "red" that most people use to describe it. At the surface we see colors such as gold, tan, and brown.

The red color is due to oxidization or rusting of the iron rocks and as it rusts it creates the Martian "soil" which is called regolith.

This soil is dusty and when it is kicked into the atmosphere during storms the planet turns a reddish color.

Mars is only half of Earth's diameter and its surface has many appearances as the dry land on Earth.

Mars has volcanoes, crust movement, impact craters, and atmospheric conditions such as dust storms that, over the years, has changed the landscape.

Valles Marineris is a large canyon system on Mars whose length is long enough to stretch from New York to California on Earth; with a distance of over 3,000 mi/4,800 km.

At its widest point, the canyon is 200 mi/320 km and 4.3 mi/7 km at its deepest. To compare this to Earth, it is nearing ten times the size of the Grand Canyon.

Mars also has the solar system's largest volcano, Olympus Mons. The volcano is three times taller than Mt. Everest on Earth and has a base that is the size of the state of New Mexico.

Thanks to the incredible Mars rovers, we believe that Mars had water on its surface in the past.

There is evidence of ancient river valley networks, lakebeds, and deltas as well as minerals and rocks on the surface that are only formed when there is liquid water.

Some of the features on the surface of Mars suggest that around 3.5 billion years ago, the planet experienced huge floods.

Today, any water that is found on Mars is in the form of water-ice just below the surface in the polar regions, as well as salty or briny water which flows down some of the crater walls and hillsides at various times of the year.

The atmosphere on Mars is too thin for liquid water to remain on the surface.

Atmosphere. Magnetosphere, and Moon Status:

The atmosphere of Mars is made up of 95% carbon dioxide, which is very similar to the atmosphere of Venus, which is 97% carbon dioxide. However, the difference between Mars and Venus is the temperature.

The runaway greenhouse effect that Venus experiences makes temperatures incredibly hot, reaching over 480 degrees C.

The temperature on Mars never goes any higher than 20 degrees C. The temperature differences are due to the density of the two atmospheres.

The atmosphere on Mars is very thin while there is a thick atmosphere on Venus.

Scientists have done a lot of research on Mars and they also think that the atmosphere may have caused the loss of any liquid water that was once on the planet.

Orbiting spacecraft has shown that Mars does have frozen water in its polar caps and there is some evidence that indicates that there might be liquid water under Mars' surface.

Scientists think that at one time in its history, Mars might have had a good enough atmosphere to have water on the surface.

The Mars temperature can reach as high as 70 degrees F/20 degrees C and as low as -225 degrees F/-153 degrees C.

The atmosphere is so thin that any heat from the sun quickly escapes the planet.

If you were standing on Mars it would appear as a hazy red color. The Mars winds can create incredibly strong dust storms that cover a lot of the planet.

They can be so strong that it can take months before all of the dust settles.Today, Mars doesn't have a magnetic field.

However, there are areas of the Martian crust in the southern hemisphere that are very highly magnetized.

This indicates that there are traces of what once was a magnetic field around 4 billion years ago.

Mars does have two small moons: Phobos and Deimos. It's believed that these may have actually been asteroids that were captured.

The moons are shaped like potatoes and have such a small mass that their own gravity can't make them spherical like our Earth's moon.

The moons were named for the horses that pulled that chariots for Ares, the Greek god of war. In Ancient Greek, the word "Phobos" translates to "flight," and "Deimos" translates to "fear."

Phobos is the largest moon and the one closest to Mars. It's heavily cratered with many deep surface grooves.

It is moving slowly toward Mars and it's believed that in about 50 million years it will either break apart or crash into Mars.

Deimos is around half the size of Phobos and its orbit is 2 ½ times farther away. Deimos is strangely shaped and is covered in loose dirt that sometimes fills in the craters on its surface.

It's due to this odd situation that it often looks smoother than Phobos.Mars doesn't have any rings, however, it's thought that in 50 million years, when Phobos either breaks apart or crashes into Mars, it might create a dusty ring around Mars.

Could Life Exist on Mars?

Scientists don't think that they will ever find living things on Mars as the conditions aren't good enough for life to thrive. However, they are seeking signs that life might have existed on the planet a long time ago when Mars was warmer and had liquid water covering its surface.

Interesting Information:

During the 19th century it was popular to think that Mars had life and civilizations populating it. The reason for this belief was mainly caused by an error and some really imaginative people.

Astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli looked through a telescope in 1877 and saw lines on the surface of Mars that he called "canalis" and that he thought were created by living creatures.

Other people called the lines "canals" and that became the source of stories and science fiction ideas about life on Mars.

These ideas continued until new telescopes were developed that were more powerful and let astronomers see that the lines were really just a natural part of the surface and caused those in the past to have optical illusions.

The atmosphere on Mars is so thin that the heat from the sun quickly escapes. If you were to stand on the surface of Mars on the equator at noon, it would feel like spring at your feet (75 degrees F/24 degrees C and winter at your head 32 degrees F/0 degrees C.

Space Missions to Mars:

Of all of the planets and bodies in our solar system, Mars is the most explored and the only planet that we have sent rovers to travel the landscape and collect samples and data.

NASA, India, and ESA (European Space Agency) have spacecraft orbiting above Mars.

The robotic explorers have found a lot of evidence that at one time, billions of years ago, Mars was warmer and wetter, with a thicker atmosphere.

Recorded observations reach back as far as 4,000 years when the Ancient Egyptians charted Mars' movements across the sky.

We have had an international fleet of spacecraft that have orbited and some that have landed on Mars, including the robotic rovers.

Strangely, there have been many attempts at sending robotic spacecraft that have failed, but we are pleased to say that many also succeeded including:

Mars Odyssey, Mars Express, Opportunity rover, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Curiosity rover, Mars Orbiter Mission, MAVEN and ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter.

NASA's InSight arrived on November 26, 2018, with communications support from the twin MarCO cubesats, the first CubeSats sent into Deep Space.

Important Events:

1659: Christiaan Huygens draws the Syrtis Major on Mars as dark markings.

1877: Giovanni Schiaparelli creates a map of Mars that includes his idea of "canalis"

1877: Asaph Hall discovers Mars' two moons: Phobos and Deimos.

1965: NASA's Mariner 4 sends the first up close images of Mars in 22 photos.

1971: Mariner 9 is first spacecraft to orbit Mars and completes the mapping of almost all of the Mars surface.

1976: Viking 1 and 2 land on the Mars surface.

1997: Mars Pathfinder lands and sends out Sojourner, the first wheeled rover to explore the surface of Mars.

2002: Mars Odyssey mission makes Mars observations to locate water ice that may be buried on Mars.

2004: Twin Mars Exploration Rovers named Spirit and Opportunity are dispatched to do scientific experiments, finding evidence that long ago Mars had liquid water on its surface.

2006: Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter sends back images of Mars that are high-resolution and studies the Mars seasonal changes and water history of Mars.

2008: Phoenix mission presence of liquid water and good soil chemistry as part of its mission for potential future habitation.

2012: NASA's Mars rover Curiosity finds conditions in Gale Crater that indicate they may have once been suitable for microbial life in the past.

Facts about Mars for Kids:

There have been 40 missions to Mars, but only 18 of the missions were successful.

The dust storms on Mars are so large that they are considered to be the biggest in the solar system.

Meteorites that have been ejected from Mars have been found all over the Earth.

Of all of the planets in the solar system, only Earth has confirmed life and Mars is believed to possibly be hospital for life.

Earth and Mars are the only to planets in the solar system with polar ice caps.

Mars does have seasons but they are twice as long as the seasons on Earth due to Mars' axis tilt.

If you were standing on Mars and looked at the sun it would appear half the size as compared to looking at the sun from Earth.

Pop Culture:

It can be easily said that Mars has captured the collective imagination of humans more than any other planet.

In the 1800s, when people first thought that there were canal-like features on the surface of Mars, they thought that these were the proof that intelligent alien species lived on the planet.

These ideas led to more stories, books, movies, and television shows than any other planet. The most notable of the situations was the 1938 radio drama of the H.G. Wells book, "The War of the Worlds."

The broadcast was so realistic that many listeners though that there really was an invasion of Earth by Martians, and went into a panic.

Television has also picked up on the idea of intelligent creatures on Mars with the 1966 series "My Favorite Martian."

Another Mars tale on television and in books was "The Expanse." Other stories that have taken place on Mars were transitioned to movies such as the 1990 "Total Recall" and the remake in 2012.

In this version, the ultimate tale involved terraforming Mars and a colony struggling due to lack of air.

The 2014 novel that became the movie adaptation in 2015 of "The Martian" involved a botanist that was left stranded on Mars and his struggle to survive while he awaits rescue.
https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/mars/overview/
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Mars Facts for Kids - Interesting Facts about Planet Mars

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Each time you look up to the sky and see a star you are looking at a sun in another galaxy. If you were on another planet looking back at our solar system, you would see our sun as a star. It's believed that every sun has planets orbiting it.

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Introduction:

Each time you look up to the sky and see a star you are looking at a sun in another galaxy. If you were on another planet looking back at our solar system, you would see our sun as a star.

It's believed that every sun has planets orbiting it. Our Milky Way galaxy has more planets than it has stars. In our solar system we have eight planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars are the inner rocky planets. Jupiter and Saturn are the outer gas giants.

Uranus and Neptune are the outer ice giants. In recent years, astronomers have designed a new class called the "dwarf planets." These are smaller worlds, not quite big enough to be considered a standard planet, and include Pluto. Jupiter is the fifth planet from the sun.

Jupiter Statistics:

Distance from Sun: 483.8 million mi

Rings: 4

Radius: 43,441 mi

Polar Diameter: 133,709 km

Orbital period: 12 years

Mass: 1.90 × 10^27 kg (318 Earths)

Length of day: 0d 9h 56m

Surface area: 23.71 billion mi²

Effective Temperature: -148 °C

Moons: (79, including (Io, Europa, Ganymede & Callisto)

First Recorded: 7th-8th Century BCE by Babylonian astronomers

How did Jupiter get its name:

Jupiter was named after the Roman king of the gods. It's the fifth planet from the sun in our solar system and the largest planet of all. To give you an idea of how big Jupiter is, you could line up 11 Earths, side-by-side just to stretch from one side of Jupiter to the other.

Jupiter's mass is incredibly large as well and it would take 317 Earths to match the mass of Jupiter.

Formation:

Around 4.5 billion years ago our solar system settled into the configuration that we know today. Jupiter settled in its position as the fifth planet about 4 billion years ago.

Gravity played a major part in creating the planets as it pulls dust and swirling gas together. Jupiter is one of the gas giants and it's believed that it took most of the mass that was left after the sun was formed.

This is why Jupiter has over twice the materials of all of the other bodies in the solar system combined. Jupiter has the same ingredients as our own sun and if it had grown just a bit larger it would have ignited to become a second sun in our solar system.

Structure and Surface:

Jupiter is made up of a composition of mostly hydrogen and helium that is very similar to our sun. As a gas giant you have to go deep into the atmosphere to find that temperature and pressure has increased so much that it has compressed the hydrogen gas into a liquid form.

That hydrogen liquid gives Jupiter the largest ocean in the entire solar system. Scientists believe that nearing halfway to Jupiter's center the pressure is so great that electrons are squeezed away from the hydrogen atoms.

This would put the liquid into a condition where it is electrically conductive, like metals. It's thought that the fast rotation of the planet is enough to drive electrical currents in this area so that it generates the incredibly powerful magnetic field.

Scientists speculate that Jupiter's interior is made up of three regions: a rocky core with a mass of between 12-45 times the size of the Earth that is made-up of mostly iron and silicate minerals.

It's thought to be as hot as possibly 90,032 F/50,000 degrees C. The second region makes up most of Jupiter's mass and it surrounds the core with a layer of liquid hydrogen that is electrically conductive.

The third region is made up of ordinary hydrogen with some helium traces and this transitions to the atmosphere of the planet.

Jupiter is a gas giant and as such, doesn't really have what we would call a real "surface." The planet is made up of gases and liquids that are constantly swirling around.

If we tried to send a spacecraft to Jupiter there wouldn't be a place for it to land. A spacecraft would also be unable to fly due to the extreme temperatures and pressures that would crush, vaporize, and melt the spacecraft.

Jupiter's storms are incredibly huge and they seem to be created on the edges of the darker and lighter horizontal bands of the planet.

The biggest storm is The Great Red Spot, and it's nearing 25,000 km across. The Great Red Spot has been going on for centuries and is big enough to hold two Earths

Scientists have discovered that Jupiter actually gives off more energy than it receives from the sun.

They have figured out that Jupiter is so large that its mass exerts such an incredible gravitational force on itself that it compresses or squashes the planet. This process makes such a great quantity of heat that it becomes overloaded and throws it out into space.

As the fifth planet in the solar system, Jupiter is a tad more than five times the distance of the sun than Earth is.

A year for a planet is the amount of time that it takes to complete an orbit around the sun, and for Jupiter this takes 4,333 Earth days.

A day for a planet is the amount of time it takes to make one entire rotation and Jupiter sets the record in the solar system for a bit less than ten hours. The incredibly fast rotation that Jupiter has is what makes the bulge near its equator.

This bulge also makes it look less like a sphere. The sheer size of the planet and the fact that it's mostly made up of gas, without a solid body, has created an odd situation in that not all parts of Jupiter rotate at the same time.

The rotation of Jupiter's polar atmosphere rotates five minutes slower than that of the equator.

Atmosphere. Magnetosphere, and Moon Status:

Scientists have had a difficult time trying to define Jupiter's atmosphere. This is due to the fact that its outer zone of gas changes into a liquid layer as you get closer into the planet.

They estimate that the atmospheric pressure on the "surface" of Jupiter is around ten times that at sea level on Earth.

The gases in the atmosphere are almost the same that make up our sun: 90% hydrogen and 10% helium.

There are a lot of colors in Jupiter's cloud bands and spots, and may be plumes of sulfur and phosphorus-containing gases that rise from the intense heat of the interior of the planet. It's thought that Jupiter has three distinct cloud layers that make up its "skies."

When added together these cloud layers expand to around 44 mi/71 km. The top cloud layer is most likely made up of ammonia ice, the middle layer is likely to consist of ammonium hydrosulfide crystals, and the innermost layer may be vapor and water ice.

Jupiter's incredibly fast rotation allows it to complete a rotation every 10 hours and this creates strong jet streams that separate the clouds into bright areas and dark belts for long stretches.

The "spots" on Jupiter are actually massive storms that can live for many years. As smaller storms form they are often engulfed by larger ones.

The prevailing winds can reach up to 335 mph/539 kph at the equator. The most well-known is The Great Red Spot which is a swirl of oval clouds twice as wide as our Earth.

We know that we have been observing this spot for over 300 years. Most recently three smaller oval storms merged together to form the Little Red Spot which is half the size of The Great Red Spot.

Scientists continue to study Jupiter and yet are unsure if these planet-circling bands and ovals are deeply rooted or shallow to the planet's interior.

Jupiter has 79 confirmed moons and scientists have divided them up into three groups. The inner moons are those that are closest to Jupiter; the Galilean moons, Galileo Galilei; and Outer moons, these are the smallest and most distant from Jupiter.

The biggest of Jupiter's moons is Ganymede and it's also the biggest moon in the solar system. An interesting thing about Ganymede is that even though it's a moon, it's larger than the planet Mercury.

Europa is one of the large moons that many scientists are interested in because they believe that there might be a liquid-water ocean beneath the frozen crust.

Jupiter has other large moons including Callisto and Io. It's thought that Jupiter has enough moons that it could be a miniature solar system.

Jupiter has a powerful magnetic field that balloons 600,000 to 2 million mi/1-3 million km toward the sun.

This is 7-21 times the diameter of Jupiter itself and the field tapers into a tadpole-shaped tail that extends out behind the planet more than 600 million mi/1 billion km.

This extension goes as far as the orbit of Saturn. The intense magnetic field of Jupiter is 16-54 times as powerful as the magnetic field of Earth and rotates with the planet, picking up any particles that have an electric charge.

The magnetic field traps swarms of charged particles near the planet and then speeds them up to extremely high energies, creating high intensity radiation that bombards the innermost moons.

It's this radiation that can cause a lot of damage to any spacecraft and why much of the exploration of Jupiter is often done from a distance. The magnetic field does create some of the most beautiful aurorae at its poles.

In 1979 the NASA Voyager 1 spacecraft discovered a ring around Jupiter. This discovery was a surprise because they are made up of small dark particles that are almost impossible to see except when they are backlit by the sun.

Data sent from the Galileo spacecraft confirmed that the ring of Jupiter is probably formed by dust kicked up as meteoroids crash into the many moons that orbit Jupiter.

Could Life Exist on Jupiter?

The environment within Jupiter is not conducive to life as we know it. The pressures and temperatures, along with materials of Jupiter are too volatile and extreme for life to adapt to.

While Jupiter itself can't be a location for life, some of its moons could be. Europa is thought to be one of the likeliest places that life may be found anywhere in our solar system so far.

Evidence is showing that there is a huge ocean beneath Europa's crust with liquid water that could possible support life.

Interesting Information:

Jupiter's intense magnetic field is thought to be a contributing factor in protecting Earth from a worse bombardment of meteorites.

As meteorites enter the solar system from the exterior areas they are caught up by Jupiter before they have a chance to get close to Earth.

Space Missions to Jupiter:

Jupiter has been studied for many years, with the first observations detailed in 1610 by Galileo Galilei. Since then, we have sent a number of spacecraft, probes, and orbiters to take detailed images and collect data from Jupiter.

In the 1970's we sent Pioneer 10 and 11 as well as Voyager 1 and 2 for flybys of Jupiter. The Galileo spacecraft orbited the gas giant and sent a probe into the atmosphere.

When Cassini was heading to Saturn it took an array of images of Jupiter, and New Horizon did the same as it headed to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt. In 2016 NASA's June spacecraft arrived in the Jovian system to study the gas giant in orbit.

1610: Galileo Galilei creates his Jupiter observations.

1973: Pioneer 10 is the first spacecraft to get through the asteroid belt and does a flyby passed Jupiter.

1979: Voyager 1 and 2 missions find the faint rings of Jupiter, a number of new moons that were not know about before and the fact that Io has volcanic activity.

1992: Ulysses mission does a swing by so that the gravity bent the flight path of the spacraft allowing the probe to a last orbit that took it over the south and north poles of the sun.

1994: Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 enters Jupiter's atmosphere, breaks up and then crashes into Jupiter.

1995-2003: The Galileo spacecraft places a probe into the atmosphere of Jupiter to accomplish observations of the planet and its rings and moons.

2000: Cassini's close approach to Jupiter enables it to take full color photos of Jupiter.

2007: NASA's New Horizons spacecraft takes pictures of Jupiter on its way to Pluto. The pictures offer new information and data on the atmospheric storms on Jupiter, it's rings, Io's volcanic activity and the ice on Europa.

2016: NASA's Juno spacecraft arrives at Jupiter and conducts studies of the planets magnetosphere, atmosphere, and deep structure to help understand Jupiter's evolution and origin.

Facts about Jupiter for Kids:

If Jupiter had been 80 times more massive it would have become our second sun in the solar system.

Jupiter holds the title of being the solar system's fourth brightest object.

Jupiter's clouds are made up of mostly ammonia crystals, sulfur and mixtures of both of these.

As asteroids and comets have impacted Jupiter they kick up dust particles that have created a very faint ring around Jupiter.

The discovery of Jupiter's 4 moons by Galileo was the first proof that the Earth was not the center of the universe and evidence that planets orbited the sun.

We can only see five planets with the naked eye and Jupiter is one of them.

Pop Culture:

Jupiter has made a presence in many television shows, movies, comics, and video games. In the science fiction "Jupiter Ascending" it was the main destination. Jupiter's moons have also been noted in "Cloud Atlas, Futurama, Power Rangers, and Halo."

You might remember "Men in Black" when Will Smith, playing Agent J, comments that he thought his teacher was from Venus and Tommy Lee Jones, playing Agent K, corrects him to say that she was really from one of Jupiter's Moons.

In the movie "2010: The Year we Make Contact," Jupiter was ignited to become the second sun in our solar system and its moon Io was to be left alone to allow life to progress.
https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/jupiter/overview/
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Jupiter Facts for Kids - Interesting Facts about Planet Jupiter

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Each time you look up to the sky and see a star you are looking at a sun in another galaxy. If you were on another planet looking back at our solar system, you would see our sun as a star. It's believed that every sun has planets orbiting it.

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Introduction:

Each time you look up to the sky and see a star you are looking at a sun in another galaxy. If you were on another planet looking back at our solar system, you would see our sun as a star. It's believed that every sun has planets orbiting it. Our Milky Way galaxy has more planets than it has stars.

In our solar system we have eight planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars are the inner rocky planets. Jupiter and Saturn are the outer gas giants. Uranus and Neptune are the outer ice giants.

In recent years, astronomers have designed a new class called the "dwarf planets." These are smaller worlds, not quite big enough to be considered a standard planet, and include Pluto. Saturn is the sixth planet from the sun, as is most well-known for its spectacular array of beautiful rings.

Saturn Statistics:

Distance from Sun: 890.8 million mi

Rings: (30 or more - in 7 groups)

Radius: 36,184 mi

Polar Diameter: 108,728 km

Orbital period: 29 years

Mass: 5.68 × 10^26 kg (95 Earths)

Length of day: 0d 10h 42m

Surface area: 16.49 billion mi²

Moons: (62 including Titan, Enceladus, Iapetus & Rhea)

First Recorded: 8th Century BCE by the Assyrians

How did Saturn get its name:

Saturn has a diameter that is the second largest in our solar system. It is the 6th planet and since Saturn and Jupiter share so much of the makeup of their atmospheres and have similar rotations, they have been listed as "relatives." Saturn was given the name of the Roman father of the god Jupiter, who was also the god of agriculture.

Formation:

It took our solar system until 4.5 billion years ago to settle into its current rotation configuration.

Gravity pulled all of the dust and swirling gas together to form the gas giant of Saturn and around 4 billion years ago it settle to the location that we see today in the outer solar system.

Saturn, like Jupiter, is mostly made up of hydrogen and helium, the same two major elements that make up our sun.

Structure and Surface:

Saturn is a gas giant like Jupiter and is made up of mostly hydrogen and helium. Saturn's central core consists of dense metals such as nickel and iron and this is surrounded by rocky materials and other compounds that are solidified due to the intense heat and pressure.

Like Jupiter's core, there is an envelope around this area of liquid metallic hydrogen inside a layer of liquid hydrogen.

Just as with Jupiter, Saturn shares the same characteristics of a gas giant and doesn't have a true surface.

Saturn is mostly swirling liquids and gases deeper down and any spacecraft that was sent there wouldn't have any place to land. The pressures and temperatures on Saturn are so intense that any craft would be crushed, melted and vaporized.

If you combine Jupiter and Saturn together, they make up 92% of the entire mass of the Solar System. Saturn's interior is incredibly hot and can reach temperatures up to 21,000 degrees F (11,700 degrees C).

Atmosphere. Magnetosphere, and Moon Status:

Saturn's atmosphere consists of: 96% hydrogen, 4% helium, and trace amounts of acetylene, ethane, ammonia, methane, and phosphine.

There is a layer of atmosphere on Saturn that has wind speeds that are as high as 1,800 kph and are thought to be some of the solar system's fastest known wind speeds.

Although it can't really be seen, Saturn has a banded cloud patterns that are widest at the equator than those that are found on Jupiter. These were discovered during the Voyager missions in the 1970s. Saturn's clouds look like striped light jet streams and even storms with brown, grey, and yellow colors.

Jupiter is known for The Great Red Spot, but Saturn's atmosphere also has "great white spots." These are short-lived storms that seem to appear once every full Saturn orbit and are visible thanks to the Hubble Space Telescope.

The velocity of the winds in Saturn's upper atmosphere around the equator can reach 1,600 feet per second/500 meters per second.

If you compare it to Earth's strongest hurricane-force winds that are 360 feet per second/110 meters per second, you can see that Saturn is really extreme.

The pressure within the gases is so powerful that if you could be within it you would feel as if you were diving deep underwater. Saturn's pressure is so great that it squeezes gas into a liquid form.

Although Saturn's magnetic field is smaller than Jupiter's, it's still 578 times more powerful than our Earth's.

Saturn and its rings as well as a lot of its satellites all exist within its enormous magnetosphere. Saturn's magnetosphere is in the region of space where electrically charged particles are influenced less by solar wind and instead, controlled by Saturn's magnetic field.

An aurorae happens when these charges particles enter the magnetic field lines in a planet's atmosphere.

On Earth, we have charged particles hitting our magnetic field from the solar wind. However, the Cassini spacecraft showed that, like Jupiter, some of Saturn's aurorae are unaffected by the solar wind.

Saturn's aurorae are caused by particles that originate in its moons, ejected by the magnetic field's fast rotation rate. Scientists are still studying what are known as "non-solar-originating" aurorae.

Saturn currently has 53 confirmed moons and an additional nine provisional moons that are waiting for confirmation.

Saturn has almost become a symbol for our solar system and is known as "The Ringed Planet." The rings that surround Saturn are absolutely beautiful and are made of chunks of ice and dust.

The rings expand out over 12,700 km from Saturn. The rings are only around 20 meters thick.

The rings of Saturn are believed to be pieces of asteroids, comets, or even shattered moons that broke up before they hit the planet, and became smaller pieces when torn apart due to the powerful gravity of the planet.

These are billions of pieces of ice that are coated with other dust materials. The particles range in size from the tiniest granules to large pieces as big as a house; and even a few as big as mountains.

Each ring orbits around Saturn at a different speed.

The ring system around Saturn expands out to 175,000 mi/282,000 km, however, the height of the main rings vertically is only around 30 ft/10m.

Scientists have named the rings in an alphabetic order based on when they were discovered. The rings are surprisingly close to each other, with the exception of a 2,920 mi/4,700 km gap called the Cassini Division that separates Rings A and B.

The main rings around Saturn are: A, B, and C. More recently discovered are the fainter rings of D, E, F, and G.

Could Life Exist on Saturn?

Temperatures and pressures, combined with the lack of actual surface on Saturn make this planet a condition not conducive to life as we know it. Like Jupiter, everything is too extreme for organisms to adapt to and thrive.

However, scientists are looking at some of Saturn's moons and satellites for potential life. Of great interest in Enceladus and Titan that have liquid water oceans inside.

Interesting Information:

Twice every 29 ½ years, Saturn appears to lose its rings. This is actually an optical illusion due to the fact that on Earth, we can't see the rings of Saturn when they are edge-on.

The rings are barely visible through some of our most powerful telescopes when in standard configuration.

Saturn is the only planet within our solar system that has an average density that is less than liquid water. This means that if you had a huge bathtub filled with water that was big enough, Saturn would float in it.

One of the most unusual features exists on Saturn's north pole. This atmospheric condition has a six-sided jet stream that creates a hexagon-shaped pattern.

This was first noted in Voyager I spacecraft images and then later observed more closely by the Cassini spacecraft. The hexagon spans around 20,000 mi/30,000 km across with a wave jet stream of 200 mph/322 kph and a huge center that rotates.

There is no weather feature like this anywhere in the known solar system.

Space Missions to Saturn:

So far, there have been four robotic spacecraft that have visited Saturn. The first look was NASA's Pioneer 11 in 1979.

Then in 1980 and 1981, NASA sent Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 for flybys. Each new trip exposed wonderful details about the ringed gas giant, however, it wasn't until 2004 with the international Cassini mission that we learned so much more.

Cassini remained in orbit for 13 years, studying Saturn. Cassini's last mission was to plunge it into the atmosphere of Saturn in 2017 to learn as much as possible. Cassini had also carried the Huygens probe that had previously landed in 2005 on Saturn's moon Titan.

Important Events:

700 BCE: The Assyrians are credited for documenting the oldest written records on Saturn. Their description of Saturn calls it a sparkle in the night and they named it "Star of Ninib."

400 BCE: The Ancient Greeks gave the name of the planet as Kronos, to honor their god of agriculture. Later the Romans changed it to Saturn, which is their god of agriculture.

1610: Galileo Galilei identifies Saturn's rings through a telescope, but thinks they are a triple planet.

1655: Christiaan Huygens discovers Saturn's rings as well as its moon, Titan.

1675: Astronomer Jean-Dominique Cassini discovers a "division" between our currently identified A and B rings.

1979: Pioneer 11 becomes the first spacecraft to reach Saturn and discovers the F ring as well as another moon.

1980 and 1981: Voyager 1 does a flyby of Saturn in 1980 and shows the structure of Saturn's ring system which is made up of thousands of ringlets. The 1981 flyby of Voyager 2 includes a lot more detail of Saturn in images and data collected showed that some of the rings are very thin.

2004: NASA's Cassini spacecraft is the first to be devoted to a complete orbit of Saturn and devotes ten years to the study of Saturn, its rings, and its moons.

2005: The ESA (European Space Agency's) Huygens probe becomes the first to make a landing on the surface of another planet's moon, Titan. The probe sent information on Titan's atmosphere and images of the surface.

2006: Scientists discover a new ring around Saturn.

2009: NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope sends data that shows that there is a large, low density ring associated with Saturn's moon Phoebe.

2017: Cassini's mission in orbit ends the 13 year study by sending the spacecraft into the atmosphere of Saturn while it collected and sent back data.

Facts about Saturn for Kids:

There are only five planets that can be seen from Earth with the naked eye, Saturn is one of them.

Most planets are somewhat spherical in shape, but Saturn is flatter; in fact it's the flattest of any planet in the solar system.

When you look at Saturn is has a color that's pale yellow. This is because its upper atmosphere contains a high quantity of ammonia crystals.

Saturn has storms that are oval in shape and similar to those on Jupiter.

Saturn is the one planet that has the most extensive system of rings in the entire solar system.

A year is the amount of time a planet takes to complete its orbit around the sun. It takes Saturn 29.4 Earth years to complete the orbit.

Saturn is made up of mostly hydrogen and is the least dense of all of the planets in the solar system.

Earth's magnetic field is just a little stronger than that of Saturn.

Pop Culture:

Saturn has played a role in many science fiction stories, television, movies, comics, and video games. The planet's usual rings have made it an icon for space travel.

Some of the pop culture references include: "Cthulhu Mythos, WALL-E, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Trek, Dead Space 2, and Final Fantasy VII.

Tim Burton created the movie "Beetlejuice" where a fictional Saturn is home to giant sandworms, and the 2014 movie "Interstellar," had a wormhole near Saturn that allowed astronauts to travel to another galaxy.
https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/saturn/overview/ https://space-facts.com/saturn/
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Saturn Facts for Kids - Interesting Facts about Planet Saturn

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Each time you look up to the sky and see a star you are looking at a sun in another galaxy. If you were on another planet looking back at our solar system, you would see our sun as a star. It's believed that every sun has planets orbiting it.

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Uranus Facts for Kids - Interesting Facts about Planet Uranus

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The planet Uranus is one of the gas giants and in our solar system, it’s huge diameter makes it the third largest and the fourth in mass.

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Introduction:

Each time you look up to the sky and see a star you are looking at a sun in another galaxy. If you were on another planet looking back at our solar system, you would see our sun as a star.

It's believed that every sun has planets orbiting it. Our Milky Way galaxy has more planets than it has stars.

In our solar system we have eight planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars are the inner rocky planets. Jupiter and Saturn are the outer gas giants. Uranus and Neptune are the outer ice giants.
In recent years, astronomers have designed a new class called the "dwarf planets." These are smaller worlds, not quite big enough to be considered a standard planet, and include Pluto. Neptune is the eighth planet from the sun.

Neptune Statistics:

Distance from Sun: 2.793 billion mi

Rings: 5

Radius: 15,299 mi

Polar Diameter: 48,682 km

Orbital period: 165 years

Mass: 1.024 × 10^26 kg (17.15 M⊕)

Moons: (14, including Triton)

Date of Discovery: September 23, 1846 by Urbain Le Verrier & Johann Galle

How did Neptune get its name:

Neptune is the eighth planet in our solar system and is known for its beautiful blue color. It was this color that was used to name it after the Roman god of the sea. The Greeks called their god of the sea, Poseidon. Neptune also has a diameter that makes it the 4th largest planet and it is third largest by mass.

Neptune wasn't located by just using sight, but instead became the first planet found using mathematical calculations.

Urbain Le Verrier had a series of predictions that were carried forth by Johann Galle in 1946. Le Verrier suggested that the planet be named after the Roman god of the sea.

Formation:

Our solar system went through a lot of changes as it was formed. Some of the larger planets are believed to have been closer to the sun and it's thought that other bodies may have been tossed out or crashed into existing planets to merge to the ones that we know today.

Around 4 billion years ago Neptune moved from the inner area of the solar system to its current position. It wasn't until 4.5 billion years ago that the planets finally settled to the configuration that we have now.

Structure and Surface:

Neptune is one of our solar system's two ice giants. Both Neptune and Uranus exist in the outer solar system. Around 80% of Neptune's mass consists of dense hot fluid of "icy" materials such as water, ammonia, and methane.

The fluids are around a rocky, small core. Neptune is considered to be one of the "giant" planets and yet is also the densest. Scientists have theorized that there might be a superhot water ocean under the cold clouds of Neptune that doesn't boil away due to the high pressure that locks it inside.

The planet doesn't really have a solid surface as most of its mass is made of gases.

The hydrogen, methane, and helium goes down to deep levels and merges with water and melted liquids that are over a solid core that has around the same mass as the Earth.

Neptune and Uranus have similarities when it comes to the inside of the planets. Both have two layers: a rocky core and a dense, hot liquid mantle made of water, ammonia, and methane.

The rocky core of Uranus is believed to be around 1.2 times the size of Earth's and the mantle is thought to be between 10-15 times that of Earth's mass.

While both Uranus and Neptune might share some characteristics and features, Uranus gives off as much heat as it receives from the sun and yet Neptune gives off around 2.61 times the heat that it gets.

This is unusual as both Neptune and Uranus have the same surface temperature.

Neptune only receives 40% of the sun's heat energy that Uranus gets. The excess amount of internal heat is thought to be what keeps the upper atmosphere wind speeds going.

Neptune spins rather quickly and has the third shortest "day" of any planet in the solar system. Its size and rotation mean that it takes 165 Earth years for Neptune to make a full orbit around the sun.

There are 14 moons around Neptune, and the largest moon is Triton, which is shaped like a sphere and has a rotation that is opposite that of Neptune.

Scientists think that at one time in history Triton was actually a dwarf planet that Neptune caught in its gravity.

Atmosphere. Magnetosphere, and Moon Status:

Very similar to the planet Uranus, Neptune's upper atmosphere is made up of mostly hydrogen (80%), helium (19%), and trace amounts of the methane that gives it the blue coloring.

Neptune has a much deeper shade of blue that makes it different than Uranus in atmospheric composition.

While Neptune's ice giant neighbor, Uranus, is a blue-green color due to high levels of atmospheric methane, Neptune is mostly hydrogen and helium, giving it a brighter shade of blue.

Scientists believe that there may be an unknown element that causes Neptune to have a more intense color.

We give credit to the Voyager 2 spacecraft mission for discovering Neptune's "Dark Spots." These are similar to the Great Red Spot on Jupiter because they are large storms.

Additional research from the Hubble Space Telescope has shown that the storms on Neptune or "dark spots" have fairly short lives.

During the mission, Voyager 2 also found other weather patterns including a smaller, short-lived white storm that moved so fast that it was nicknamed "Scooter."

As a gas giant, Neptune shares the same atmospheric characteristic of being divided into two bands, but Neptune's bands have wind speeds that can reach up to 600 m/s.

At this speed Neptune has the fastest known winds of any planet within the solar system.A 1989 discovery of an oval-shaped storm in the southern hemisphere of Neptune was named its "Great Dark Spot."

This spot is big enough to hold the entire Earth, and while this one disappeared, others have shown up on various areas of the planet.

Neptune's magnetic field main axis is tipped to the side by around 47 degrees as compared to Neptune's planetary rotation axis.

Both Neptune and Uranus have magnetic axis that are tilted and the tilt causes wild variations as the planet rotates. Neptune's magnetic field is around 27 time stronger than that of Earth.

There are 13 known moons and one provisional moon around Neptune. Triton is the largest moon and was discovered in 1846, just 17 days after the discovery of the planet.

Since Neptune is the Roman god of the sea, all of the names of Neptune's moons are for Greek mythology nymphs or lesser sea gods.

Triton holds the distinction of being the only large moon within our solar system that circles its planet in the opposite direction of the planet's rotation.

This is called a retrograde orbit and is thought to be due to the idea that the moon was once an independent object that Neptune captured with its gravity.

Triton has surface temperatures that reach -391 degrees F/235 degrees C, and while extremely cold, Voyager 2 found geysers that spewed icy material up to 5 mi/8 km high.

Voyager also discovered that Triton has a thin atmosphere and while it has been detected numerous times since then, scientists aren't sure why it's getting warmer.

There are six known rings around Neptune, five are named and one remains unnamed. The named rings are Galle, Le Verrier, Lassell, Arago, and Adams.

Neptune's rings are believed to be relatively short-lived and young, and contain unusual collections of dust that are called "arcs." These are strange because the laws of motion indicate that they shouldn't be in clumps but should spread out evenly.

Scientists believe that they may be affected by the gravitational effects of the moon Galatea.

There are four notable arcs in Adam, Neptune's outer ring that have been named: Liberté (Liberty), Egalité (Equality), Fraternité (Fraternity), and Courage.

Could Life Exist on Neptune?

The extreme temperatures and pressures of Neptune are not conducive to allowing life as we know it to exist, adapt, and thrive.

Interesting Information:

While Pluto was once considered to be a planet, it has been downsized to a dwarf planet. Due to the elliptical orbit that Pluto has it is sometimes closer to both the sun and Earth than Neptune is.

One "Neptunian day" is 16 hours. That's how long it takes for Neptune to accomplish a complete rotation. However, a Neptunian year, which is the time that it takes Neptune to orbit the sun is around 165 Earth years.

Space Missions to Neptune:

In 1989, NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft studied Neptune up close. This was over 140 years after the predictions made by Le Verrier about Neptune. Voyager 2 remains the first-and-only spacecraft to study Neptune, and it sent back an incredible volume of information and data about the planet and its moons.

Voyager 2 also confirmed that the ice giant had faint rings like other gas giant planets. Since that time, scientists have relied on the Hubble Space Telescope for additional information about Neptune.

Important Events:

1612: Galileo uses his small telescope and makes an error by recording Neptune as a fixed star.
1846: Through the use of only mathematical calculations, astronomers increase the number of planets in our solar system to eight as they add Neptune. The same year, they discovered Triton, Neptune's biggest moon.
1983: Pioneer 10 becomes the first human-made spacecraft to travel beyond our solar system planets as it crosses the orbit of Neptune. The craft continues on its course as it heads to Aldebaran, a red star in the Taurus constellation, that it will pass in around 2,000,000 years.
1984: Astronomers studying Neptune discover evidence that Neptune has a ring system.
1989: Voyager 2 becomes the first and only spacecraft to visit Neptune. Voyager 2 passes Neptune at 2,983mi/4,800 km above Neptune's north pole.
2002: Astronomers discover four additional moons orbiting around Neptune and name them: Laomedia, Neso, Sao and Halimede.
2003: Using ground-based telescopes, astronomers discover Psamathe, another new moon around Neptune.
2005: Keck Observatory scientists discover deterioration in some of Neptune's rings.
2013: Using the Hubble Space Telescope, a scientist makes the discovery of a 14th Neptune moon and gives it the professional designation of S/2004 N 1.
2016: Using the Hubble Space Telescope scientists discover the 21st century's first new atmospheric vortex with a dark spot on Neptune.

Facts about Neptune for Kids:

Neptune's rings are so faint that prior to the Voyager 2 spacecraft mission, the rings weren't thought to be complete. Neptune has the faintest rings of all of the gas giants.

Even though Neptune is a gas giant it has the second largest gravity of all of the solar system planets.

Neptune has a Great Dark Spot that is the size of our Earth and a Small Dark Spot that is almost the size of our moon.

Our ancient ancestors didn't know that Neptune existed because it can't be seen with the naked eye or the telescopes that they developed.

The coldest known object in our solar system is Neptune's moon Triton that has temperatures on the surface that can dip down to -235 degrees C.

Only 17 days after the discovery of Neptune, astronomers discovered its moon Triton.

Pop Culture:

Neptune has been a frequent focus for quite a few science fiction and pop culture themes. The "Event Horizon" was a sci-fi/horror film in 1997 and Neptune was the backdrop for the storyline.

The animated series "Futurama" had Robot Santa Claus with a home based in the north pole of Neptune. The "Sleep No More" episode of Doctor Who was set on a space station that orbited around Neptune.

Star Trek: Enterprise had the episode "Broken Bow" where fans leaned that at the speed of warp 4.5 it would be possible to fly from Earth to Neptune and back in only six minutes.
https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/neptune/overview/

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