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Articles, games and activities about our closest star

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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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If you weigh 70 pounds (32 kg) on the , you would weigh 78.5 pounds (36 kg) on Neptune. Neptune's gravitation factor relative to Earth is 1.19.

For many, centuries people did not know that this even existed. Neptune was discovered in 1846. Here is where it gets a little tricky. Johann Gottfried Galle, using Urbain Le Verrier and John Couch Adams calculations, found Neptune . What this means is that Neptune's discovery is a joint British-French-German discovery.

Neptune is the smallest of the four gas giants in our . Much like and Because of the methane in Neptune's outer , Neptune's atmosphere contains hydrogen, helium, and methane. atmosphere from the Sun gets absorbed but the blue light gets reflected back . Thus, Neptune appears blue.

We didn't know much about Neptune until the spacecraft Voyager 2's expedition on August 25, 1989 . Voyager 2 took many pictures of the planet. Much of what we know today about Neptune came from this single visit. We saw a brilliant blue planet with a few thin white clouds laced around its surface.

In Neptune's atmosphere, there is a large white cloud that moves around rather . The "scooting" of this cloud around the atmosphere is why it's named "Scooter."

When Voyager 2 visited Neptune, its pictures showed a giant storm much like the storm on Jupiter. This storm isn't the "Great Red Spot", it's the "Great Dark Spot". It appears as a dark oval shape on the surface of the planet. We do not know how long this storm has been active or if it is still present.

More recently, the Hubble Space Telescope sent pictures and there was no sign of the Great Dark Spot. These pictures did show two other dark spots that eventually

Neptune is a very windy place. No other planet in the Solar System has winds that are as strong as Neptune's. The winds near the Great Dark Spot could have reached 1,200 miles per hour (approx 1931 km per hour). this windy atmosphere contributes to the appearance and disappearance of the great dark spots .

Neptune's circular is offset from the was discovered . At times, Neptune's orbit takes it further from the Sun than any other planet in the Solar System. In 2011, Neptune completed its first orbit around the Sun since it in 1846.

Neptune has six rings which circle the planet. Scientists believe these rings are new. The rings are more irregular than the rings of other planets. There are areas of varying thickness throughout the rings.

Neptune has 14 that we know of. Because Neptune is so far away, it is difficult to see any of these moons. There are many more moons orbiting this blue planet. We haven't seen them yet.

The first moon discovered was Triton. An amateur astronomer in England named William Lassell discovered it. He found it only 17 days after Galle discovered Neptune in 1846.

The other moons are: Despina, Galatea, Halimede, Laomedeia, Larissa, Naiad, Nereid, Neso, Proteus, Psamathe, Sao, and Thalassa . Discovered July 1, 2013, the current name of the newest moon of Neptune is S/2004 N 1.

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Facts About Neptune - Our Solar System - Astronomy for Kids

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If you weigh 70 pounds (32 kg) on the , you would weigh 78.5 pounds (36 kg) on Neptune. Neptune's gravitation factor relative to Earth is 1.19. For many, centuries people did not know that this even existed. Neptune was discovered in 1846. Here is where it gets a little tricky.

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Neptune is a planet in the solar system and is the 8th closest planet to the Sun, which actually makes the planet the furthest planet from the sun. The distance from the sun to Neptune is over 2,795 million miles.

Neptune is one of the four planets in the solar system that is a gas planet. These gas planets are called 'Jovian Planets' Neptune is made up of layers and layers of gas, and has many rings and moons that orbit around the planet. Neptune is the 4th largest planet in the solar system.

The average temperature on Neptune is around -392 degrees, which makes the planet the coldest planet in the solar system. Neptune was discovered in 1846, and can only be seen through a telescope.

Neptune's upper atmosphere is made of the gas methane which gives the planet a bright blue color. It takes Neptune 165 Earth years to orbit the sun.

1 day on Neptune lasts for about 16 hours, compared to Earths 24 hours.

# 1. Only one probe from Earth has ever been sent to Neptune.

# 2. Neptune has the strongest winds of any planet in the solar system.

# 3. Neptune 13 Moons in total.

# 4. Neptune has 6 Rings.

# 5. Nearly 60 Earth's could fit into Neptune.

Q. What is the distance from the sun to Neptune?

Q. What is the average temperature on Neptune?

Q. How many years does it take for Neptune to orbit the sun?

Download questions about Neptune here: Neptune (answers are on this page)

For further reading and more information on Neptune visit http://www.planetsforkids.org
Key Vocabulary Solar System. Sun. Planet. Orbits. Methane.

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Neptune is a planet in the solar system and is the 8th closest planet to the Sun, which actually makes the planet the furthest planet from the sun. The distance from the sun to Neptune is over 2,795 million miles. Neptune is one of the four planets in the solar system that is a gas planet.

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Kids learn about the ice giant planet Neptune of the Solar System including fun facts, mass, day, year, and distance from the Sun. Astronomy for kids and teachers.

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Neptune, the Cold Planet - Solar System 3D Animation for Kids

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The Planet Neptune Song | Planet Songs for Children | Neptune Song for Kids | Silly School Songs

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All About Neptune for Kids: Astronomy and Space for Children - FreeSchool

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Best known for its fabulous ring system, Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second largest in our solar system. Like Jupiter, Saturn is a gas giant and is composed of similar gasses including hydrogen, helium and methane.

Facts about Saturn

Saturn is the most distant planet that can be seen with the naked eye.
It is the fifth brightest object in the solar system and is also easily studied through binoculars or a small telescope.

Saturn was known to the ancients, including the Babylonians and Far Eastern observers.
It is named for the Roman god Saturnus, and was known to the Greeks as Cronus.

Saturn is the flattest planet.
Its polar diameter is 90% of its equatorial diameter, this is due to its low density and fast rotation. Saturn turns on its axis once every 10 hours and 34 minutes giving it the second-shortest day of any of the solar system's planets.

Saturn orbits the Sun once every 29.4 Earth years.
Its slow movement against the backdrop of stars earned it the nickname of "Lubadsagush" from the ancient Assyrians. The name means "oldest of the old".

Saturn's upper atmosphere is divided into bands of clouds.
The top layers are mostly ammonia ice. Below them, the clouds are largely water ice. Below are layers of cold hydrogen and sulfur ice mixtures.

Saturn has oval-shaped storms similar to Jupiter's.
The region around its north pole has a hexagonal-shaped pattern of clouds. Scientists think this may be a wave pattern in the upper clouds. The planet also has a vortex over its south pole that resembles a hurricane-like storm.

Saturn is made mostly of hydrogen.
It exists in layers that get denser farther into the planet. Eventually, deep inside, the hydrogen becomes metallic. At the core lies a hot interior.

Saturn has the most extensive rings in the solar system.
The Saturnian rings are made mostly of chunks of ice and small amounts of carbonaceous dust. The rings stretch out more than 120,700 km from the planet, but are amazingly thin: only about 20 meters thick.

Saturn has 150 moons and smaller moonlets.
All are frozen worlds. The largest moons are Titan and Rhea. Enceladus appears to have an ocean below its frozen surface.

Titan is a moon with complex and dense nitrogen-rich atmosphere.
It is composed mostly of water ice and rock. Its frozen surface has lakes of liquid methane and landscapes covered with frozen nitrogen. Planetary scientists consider Titan to be a possible harbour for life, but not Earth-like life.

Four spacecraft have visited Saturn.
Pioneer 11, Voyager 1 and 2, and the Cassini-Huygens mission have all studied the planet. Cassini orbited Saturn from July 2004 until September 2017, sending back a wealth of data about the planet, its moons, and rings.

Saturn has more moons than any other planet.
20 new moons were discovered in 2019 bring the total to 82, 3 more than Jupiter.

Saturn Diagrams

Saturn size compared to Earth

Saturn distance from the Sun and orbital eccentricity

Saturn's Rings

While all the gas giants in our solar system have rings none of them are as extensive or distinctive as Saturn's. The rings were discovered by Galileo Galilei 1610 who observed them with a telescope. The first 'up close' view of the rings were by Pioneer 11 spacecraft which flew by Saturn on September 1, 1971.

Saturn's rings are made up of are billions of particles that range in size from tiny dust grains to objects as large as mountains. These are made up of chunks of ice and rock, believed to have come from asteroids comets or even moons, that broke apart before they reached the planet.

Saturn's rings are divided into 7 groups, named alphabetically in the order of their discovery (Outwards from Saturn; D, C, B, A, F, G and E). The F ring is kept in place by two of Saturn's moons, Prometheus and Pandora, these are referred to as 'shepherd moons'. Other satellites are responsible for creating divisions in the rings as well as shepherding them.

Saturn's Atmosphere

Saturn's atmosphere is composed primarily of hydrogen (96%) and helium (3%) with traces of other substances like methane, ammonia, acetylene, ethane, propane and phosphine. Winds in the upper atmosphere can reach speeds of 500 metres a second, these combined with heat rising from within the planet's interior cause yellow and gold bands.

Sources: https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/saturn/overview/, https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/saturnfact.html
First Published: June 2012
Last Updated: April 2020
Author: Chris Jones

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Saturn Facts 🪐 - Interesting Facts about Planet Saturn

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Best known for its fabulous ring system, Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second largest in our solar system. Like Jupiter,

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Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system and is the fifth planet out from the Sun. It is two and a half times more massive than all the other planets in the solar system combined. It is made primarily of gases and is therefore known as a " gas giant ".

Facts about Jupiter

Jupiter is the fourth brightest object in the solar system.
Only the Sun, Moon and Venus are brighter. It is one of five planets visible to the naked eye from Earth.

The ancient Babylonians were the first to record their sightings of Jupiter.
This was around the 7th or 8th century BC. Jupiter is named after the king of the Roman gods. To the Greeks, it represented Zeus, the god of thunder. The Mesopotamians saw Jupiter as the god Marduk and patron of the city of Babylon. Germanic tribes saw this planet as Donar, or Thor.

Jupiter has the shortest day of all the planets.
It turns on its axis once every 9 hours and 55 minutes. The rapid rotation flattens the planet slightly, giving it an oblate shape.

Jupiter orbits the Sun once every 11.8 Earth years.
From our point of view on Earth, it appears to move slowly in the sky, taking months to move from one constellation to another.

Jupiter has unique cloud features.
The upper atmosphere of Jupiter is divided into cloud belts and zones. They are made primarily of ammonia crystals, sulfur, and mixtures of the two compounds.

The Great Red Spot is a huge storm on Jupiter.
It has raged for at least 350 years. It is so large that three Earths could fit inside it.

Jupiter's interior is made of rock, metal, and hydrogen compounds.
Below Jupiter's massive atmosphere (which is made primarily of hydrogen), there are layers of compressed hydrogen gas, liquid metallic hydrogen, and a core of ice, rock, and metals.

Jupiter's moon Ganymede is the largest moon in the solar system.
Jupiter's moons are sometimes called the Jovian satellites, the largest of these are Ganymeade, Callisto Io and Europa. Ganymeade measures 5,268 km across, making it larger than the planet Mercury.

Jupiter has a thin ring system.
Its rings are composed mainly of dust particles ejected from some of Jupiter's smaller worlds during impacts from incoming comets and asteroids. The ring system begins some 92,000 kilometres above Jupiter's cloud tops and stretches out to more than 225,000 km from the planet. They are between 2,000 to 12,500 kilometres thick.

Eight spacecraft have visited Jupiter.
Pioneer 10 and 11, Voyager 1 and 2, Galileo, Cassini, Ulysses, and New Horizons missions. The Juno mission is its way to Jupiter and will arrive in July 2016. Other future missions may focus on the Jovian moons Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto, and their subsurface oceans.

Jupiter Diagrams

Jupiter size compared to Earth

Jupiter distance from the Sun and orbital eccentricity

Jupiter's Great Red Spot

Situated 22° south of Jupiter's equator, the Great Red Spot is a storm that has been raging for at least 186 years. Upper estimates suggest the storm could have been in existence for over three and a half centuries.

The first observation of the Great Red Spot was in the seventeenth century, when telescopes first started to be used. However, it is unknown whether this is the same red spot that we see today, or whether Jupiter has had many such storms that have come and gone.

The red spot spins anticlockwise and takes six (Earth) days to rotate completely. Another mystery surrounding the red spot is what makes it red. Scientists have several theories, for instance, the presence of red organic compounds.

Jupiter's Atmosphere

Jupiter's atmosphere is the solar system's largest planetary atmosphere. It is composed of hydrogen (90%) and helium (10%), in roughly the same proportions found in the Sun . It also contains much smaller amounts of other gases, such as ammonia, methane and water.

Sources: https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/jupiter/overview/, https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/jupiterfact.html, https://www.planetary.org/multimedia/space-images/jupiter/20120906_jupiter_vgr1_global_caption.html
First Published: June 2012
Last Updated: February 2020
Author: Chris Jones

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Jupiter Facts - Interesting Facts about Planet Jupiter

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Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system and is the fifth planet out from the Sun. It is two and a half times more massive than all the other planets in the solar system combined. It is made primarily of gases and is therefore known as a " gas giant ".

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Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun. It's not visible to the naked eye, and became the first planet discovered with the use of a telescope. Uranus is tipped over on its side with an axial tilt of 98 degrees. It is often described as "rolling around the Sun on its side."

Facts about Uranus

Uranus was officially discovered by Sir William Herschel in 1781.
It is too dim to have been seen by the ancients. At first Herschel thought it was a comet, but several years later it was confirmed as a planet. Herscal tried to have his discovery named "Georgian Sidus" after King George III. The name Uranus was suggested by astronomer Johann Bode. The name comes from the ancient Greek deity Ouranos.

Uranus turns on its axis once every 17 hours, 14 minutes.
The planet rotates in a retrograde direction, opposite to the way Earth and most other planets turn.

Uranus makes one trip around the Sun every 84 Earth years.
During some parts of its orbit one or the other of its poles point directly at the Sun and get about 42 years of direct sunlight. The rest of the time they are in darkness.

Uranus is often referred to as an "ice giant" planet.
Like the other gas giants, it has a hydrogen upper layer, which has helium mixed in. Below that is an icy "mantle, which surrounds a rock and ice core. The upper atmosphere is made of water, ammonia and the methane ice crystals that give the planet its pale blue colour.

Uranus hits the coldest temperatures of any planet.
With minimum atmospheric temperature of -224°C Uranus is nearly coldest planet in the solar system. While Neptune doesn't get as cold as Uranus it is on average colder. The upper atmosphere of Uranus is covered by a methane haze which hides the storms that take place in the cloud decks.

Uranus has two sets of very thin dark coloured rings.
The ring particles are small, ranging from a dust-sized particles to small boulders. There are eleven inner rings and two outer rings. They probably formed when one or more of Uranus's moons were broken up in an impact. The first rings were discovered in 1977 with the two outer rings being discovered in Hubble Space Telescope images between 2003 and 2005.

Uranus' moons are named after characters created by William Shakespeare and Alexander Pope.
These include Oberon, Titania and Miranda. All are frozen worlds with dark surfaces. Some are ice and rock mixtures. The most interesting Uranian moon is Miranda; it has ice canyons, terraces, and other strange-looking surface areas.

Only one spacecraft has flown by Uranus.
In 1986, the Voyager 2 spacecraft swept past the planet at a distance of 81,500 km. It returned the first close-up images of the planet, its moons, and rings.

Uranus Diagrams

Uranus size compared to Earth

Uranus distance from the Sun and orbital eccentricity

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Uranus Facts - Interesting Facts about Planet Uranus

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Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun. It's not visible to the naked eye, and became the first planet discovered with the use of a telescope. Uranus is tipped over on its side with an axial tilt of 98 degrees. It is often described as "rolling around the Sun on its side."

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Planet Uranus Song - 8 Planets of the Solar System Song | KidsLearningTube

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All About Uranus for Kids: Astronomy and Space for Children - FreeSchool

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Fun Saturn facts for kids including photos; suitable for Kindergarten through Grade 6.

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Check out our cool range of planet facts for kids. Enjoy some amazing trivia and have fun learning about the planets found in our Solar System.

Saturn Facts for Kids

Perhaps the most beautiful planet in our solar system (other than earth of course) due to its spectacular ring system, Saturn is a gas giant that features many extreme physical features and atmospheric conditions.

Saturn is the second largest planet in our solar system and is another gas giant.

Saturn has a small rocky core covered with liquid gas.

It is surrounded by a system of rings that stretch out into space for thousands of kilometres.

The rings are made up of millions of ice crystals, some as big as houses and others as small as specks of dust.

Saturn is very light as it is made up of more hydrogen than helium so it is less dense. If we could fit Saturn into a bathtub it would float (but that would have to be one big bathtub!)

Like Jupiter, Saturn has many moons which surround it.

Saturn is not a peaceful planet. Storm winds race around the atmosphere at 800kmp/h.

Saturn has a very strong magnetic field which traps energy particles resulting in high levels of radiation.

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Fun Saturn Facts for Kids - Amazing Information About This Planets Cool Rings

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Check out our cool range of planet facts for kids. Enjoy some amazing trivia and have fun learning about the planets found in our Solar System. Saturn Facts for Kids Perhaps the most beautiful planet in our solar system (other than earth of course) due to its spectacular ring system, Saturn is a gas giant that features many extreme physical features and atmospheric conditions.

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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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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

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Check out our cool range of planet facts for kids. Enjoy some amazing trivia and have fun learning about the planets found in our Solar System.

Saturn Facts for Kids

Perhaps the most beautiful planet in our solar system (other than earth of course) due to its spectacular ring system, Saturn is a gas giant that features many extreme physical features and atmospheric conditions.

Saturn is the second largest planet in our solar system and is another gas giant.

Saturn has a small rocky core covered with liquid gas.

It is surrounded by a system of rings that stretch out into space for thousands of kilometres.

The rings are made up of millions of ice crystals, some as big as houses and others as small as specks of dust.

Saturn is very light as it is made up of more hydrogen than helium so it is less dense. If we could fit Saturn into a bathtub it would float (but that would have to be one big bathtub!)

Like Jupiter, Saturn has many moons which surround it.

Saturn is not a peaceful planet. Storm winds race around the atmosphere at 800kmp/h.

Saturn has a very strong magnetic field which traps energy particles resulting in high levels of radiation.

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Fun Saturn Facts for Kids - Amazing Information About This Planets Cool Rings

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Check out our cool range of planet facts for kids. Enjoy some amazing trivia and have fun learning about the planets found in our Solar System. Saturn Facts for Kids Perhaps the most beautiful planet in our solar system (other than earth of course) due to its spectacular ring system, Saturn is a gas giant that features many extreme physical features and atmospheric conditions.

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Interesting Saturn Facts for Students – Educational Astronomy and Space Video

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Explore Saturn's Rings | Astronomy for Kids

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All About Saturn for Children: Astronomy and Space for Kids - FreeSchool

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Fun Jupiter facts for kids including photos; suitable for Kindergarten through Grade 6.

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Fun Jupiter Facts for Kids - Amazing Information About This Big Planet

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Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system. Its famous 'Red Spot' and raging gas storms give it an impressive if not intimidating appearance. As well as having many moons, Jupiter also has a number of rings similar to that of Saturn but much less noticeable.

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Planet Jupiter Song - 8 Planets of the Solar System Song | KidsLearningTube

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Interesting Jupiter Facts | Facts About Planet Jupiter | Jupiter Facts For Kids

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All About Jupiter for Children: Astronomy and Space for Kids - FreeSchool

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Do you know why Mars is called the Red Planet? Find out that and more on this planet printable. When they're done reading all about Mars, kids test their knowledge with fun coloring and unscrambling activities.

Don't forget to check out the rest of our Know Your Planets worksheets here.

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Know Your Planets: Mars | Worksheet | Education.com

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Do you know why Mars is called the Red Planet? Find out that and more on this planet printable. When they're done reading all about Mars, kids test their knowledge with fun coloring and unscrambling activities. Don't forget to check out the rest of our Know Your Planets worksheets here.

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Planet Mars

What does this planet look like?

Mars, commonly referred to as "the red planet," is the fourth planet from the sun. Its reddish color comes from the high amounts of iron oxide on its surface. Mars has surface features similar to those found on the moon and on Earth. It has mountain ranges, volcanic fields, valleys, ice caps, canyons and deserts. It has numerous impact craters including one, discovered in 2008, that measures more than 6,000 miles in length and nearly 5,000 miles in width. It is, by far, the largest impact crater ever discovered. Mars is also home to Olympus Mons, the highest discovered mountain in the solar system. A person standing on the surface of Mars (in any location in which the mountain was visible) would have no chance of viewing the top. With the peak at 88,600 feet, Olympus Mons is about three times as high as Mount Everest, the highest peak on Earth. Mars' Valles Marineris is the solar system's largest canyon, measuring more than seven miles deep.

How big is this planet?

Mars is much smaller than the Earth. Its surface area occupies 28% of Earth's, its mass is only 10 percent of Earth's and its volume is about 15 percent of Earth's.

How long does it take to orbit the sun?

687 days

What is its gravity like?

Gravity on Mars is 38% that of the Earth. A 100 pound Earthling would weigh 38 pounds on Mars.

How far is it from the sun? From the Earth?

On average Mars is located 138,000,000 miles from the sun. When Mars and Earth are on the same side of the sun, the two planets may come within 35,000,000 miles of each other. When they are on opposite sides of the sun, they may be as far as 399,000,000 miles apart.

What is its atmosphere like?

Mars has an extremely thin atmosphere. 95% of it is carbon dioxide, 3% is nitrogen, 1.6% is argon, and the remainder consists of traces of oxygen and water.

What's the temperature like?

Of all the planets, temperatures on Mars are most similar to those on Earth. Temperatures can range from about -220 F during a Mars (Martian) winter to a temperate 68 degrees F in summer, though on average the temperature is about -80 F. Unlike Earth, however, the thin atmosphere gives rise to fearsome dust storms that may envelop the entire planet and cause overall temperatures to rise.

How many moons does it have?

Mars has two moons, Phobos and Deimos. Both are small and irregularly shaped and may be former asteroids. Interestingly, Phobos orbits Mars at a distance of only about 5,500 miles away from its center, the closest any moon orbits its parent planet. In fact, if a person were to stand on Phobos and look toward Mars, Mars would look apx. 6,400 times larger than the full moon appears from Earth - taking up almost a quarter of the celestial hemisphere. Because Phobos has a particularly low orbit, scientists believe it will eventually crash into Mars, or, break up into pieces, possibly forming rings around the planet.

Interesting Facts:

*There has long been speculation concerning the possibility of life and or liquid water on Mars. However, the planet's thin atmosphere prevents water from accumulating for any time over significant portions of the planet. Some evidence on the planet's surface suggests the presence of liquid water at some point in history, but scientists think this water would be too salty or acidic to support life as we know it. Furthermore, fierce solar winds and poor heat transfer across its surface would make sustained life virtually impossible. There is compelling evidence, however, that Mars was once much more habitable to life than it is today.

* Many Spacecrafts have attempted to visit Mars, the most notable of which was NASA's Mariner 4, the first to visit in a fly-by in1965. In 1976, Viking 1 and 2 became the first spacecrafts to conduct successful and sustained landings on Mars. They provided the first color photographs of the "red planet." In May of 2008, the NASA Phoenix lander touched down on the north polar region of Mars to study surface features. By December, however, Nasa had lost contact with the lander and the mission was declared over.

Mars Video

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All About Planet Mars for Kids - Was There Ever Life?

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Planet Mars What does this planet look like? Mars, commonly referred to as "the red planet," is the fourth planet from the sun. Its reddish color comes from the high amounts of iron oxide on its surface. Mars has surface features similar to those found on the moon and on Earth.

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Kids learn about the planet Mars of the Solar System including fun facts, mass, day, year, and distance from the Sun. Astronomy for kids and teachers.

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What Is Mars? | 4th Planet From The Sun Explained!

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All About Mars: Astronomy and Space for Kids - FreeSchool

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The planet Venus is a little smaller than Earth and similar in mass and density, (what it's made up of). It has a similar level of gravity too.

It has no rings round it, no moons and it spins backwards. What this means is that on Venus the sun rises in the West and sets in the East, which is opposite to Earth.

Well no one really knows. It is now thought that ancient civilizations and the Mayan astronomers in 650 BC watched Venus very closely and from that creates a very accurate calendar.

It is the second closest planet to the sun and is the hottest planet - even hotter than Mercury which is the closest planet to the sun! Wow, that must be hot. The reason for this is that Mercury can't retain, or keep heat because it has no atmosphere. Venus has a very dense, rapidly spinning atmosphere made of carbon dioxide (CO²) and nitrogen (N²) with sulphur droplets in its clouds. This traps the heat created by the sun which makes it a scorched, eroded and very different planet to Earth.

Only trace amounts of water are found in the atmosphere. Its surface temperature is 864 degrees Fahrenheit (462 degrees Celsius). This is hot enough to melt lead and there's no way that anything can live on Venus at all.

What does the word 'Venus' mean?

Venus in most civilizations has been identified with love and war! Wow, two complete opposites. It was named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty, apparently because of all the five planets known to the astronomers of old and the fact that it shone the brightest. The reason that it shines so brightly is because it is close to Earth and the sunlight reflects on its clouds.

What is it like on planet Venus?

Venus is a very rocky planet with an iron core about 1,900 miles (3,000 kilometers) wide but has no magnetic field. It spins too slowly to generate the kind of magnetic field Earth has. It has a solid surface, deep craters and volcanoes or volcanic centers bigger than 12 miles (20 kilometers) in diameter. Wow, that's big.

Amazingly, there are more volcanoes on Venus than on any other planet - about 1,600 and maybe even more. Not all of them are active though. There are flow paths or channels on the surface running for hundreds of miles from erupted volcanoes.

The craters on Venus tend to be small, which are about 1.2 miles (2 kilometers wide). Any small meteor heading its way would burn up in the atmosphere before it could reach the surface. Apparently about 300 to 500 million years ago there was massive volcanic activity on Venus which coated it in solidified basalt lava, which is as hard as rock.

Venus is a very windy planet with winds reaching 450 miles per hour (724 kilometers per hour) in its middle cloud layer. These winds are much faster than Earth's fastest tornado. It wouldn't be cool to be stuck in a wind storm on Venus, that's for sure.

In the North Polar Region it has a huge high-land area called Ishtar Terra which is about the size of Australia, with a mountain similar to Mount Everest on the eastern side and a second area called Aphrodite Terra about the size of South America spreading across the equator for about 6,000 miles (10,000 kilometers). That's unbelievable!

Has Venus been explored by humans?

More than 40 spacecraft have explored Venus, but it's not easy to see through the thick atmosphere of Venus. NASA's 1990 Magellan mission mapped 98 percent of Venus's surface using radar. There are other investigations that are carrying on from the Venus Express and Japan's orbiter Akatsuki (Dawn) which is meant to arrive at Venus in 2015. This will help us understand a whole heap more about this interesting planet.

Other interesting facts about Venus

Venus takes the equivalent of 243 Earth days to rotate once and the equivalent of 225 Earth days to orbit the sun.

Venus is a rare planet in that it can sometimes be seen from Earth passing across the face of the sun, this is called a transit. Transits occurred in 1631, 1639, 1761, 1769, 1874, 1882, 8 June 2004, 6 June 2012 and the next transit will be on 11 December 2117 if anyone reading this is alive at the time!

In 2011, the pilot of an Air Canada flight saw Venus in its brightness. He thought it was an oncoming plane and took emergency procedures to avoid colliding.

Useful Websites

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Venus Facts For Kids The planet Venus is a little smaller than Earth and similar in mass and density, (what it's made up of). It has a similar level of gravity

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The Planet Venus is the second at sunrise. For this reason, it's often called the Morning Star.planet from the sun and the hottest in our solar system directly . It's a dry world whose water has all evaporated due to rampant climate change. Yet, you'd never suspect after seeing it in the sky. Venus appears as a bright, beautiful object which we can observe

In Roman mythology, Venus was the goddess of love and beauty. The Romans might have given the planet this name because it shined so beautifully !

Yet, the Romans had no idea what Venus is really like when they named it. Until Russia sent spacecraft to the planet, no one did. That's because it's covered in extremely thick clouds. Venus's atmosphere is actually 90x thicker than that of the Earth! So, for a long time, its features were a mystery to us.

Nowadays, having photographed the surface, we know that it's anything but lovely.

When people first sent spacecraft to Venus (in the 70's), we found out that it's really an awful place! For starters, it's extremely hot - hotter even than Mercurytotally covered in volcanic features , which is closer to the sun. This makes Venus a fiery wasteland. It's lava warm and liquidy so that it can flow great distances. , too. That's because its heat keeps

Where there's not just lavais marked by , Venus distorted landforms mountain ranges . Yet, they're also the size of continents here on earth. This gives much of Venus a shifting, hilly topography.. We can find craggy landmasses called tessera throughout. They're kind of like warped

All of this planetary messiness has to do with Venus's structure. Unlike Earth, Venus doesn't seem to have a tectonic system extremely . Yet, it did use to have strong volcanism. For a long time, magma kept upwelling through its surface, bending the land out of shape. Scientists don't know if this is still going on or if it has completely stopped. Regardless, it has already made Venus a frightening sight.

The atmosphere on Venus is even worse than its surface. It's made up of a thick blanket of clouds. Clouds aren't that bad, right? Wrong - these clouds are literally made out of acid and carbon dioxide! Their toxic mixture ensures that no life like that on Earth could survive on Venus.

But, it wasn't always like this. Astronomers, like Carl Sagan . And this kind of makes sense. The planet's composition is , believe that Venus was actually habitable a long time ago similar to the earth's, and it's not that much closer to the sun. So, what makes it so inhospitable now?

Venus's unbearable heat comes from a terrible cycle of climate change. Before it all began, the planet may have been quite like the Earth. The main difference was just that it was a little closer to the sun. But, as it turns out, that difference mattered A LOT.

This has to do with what's called the greenhouse effect. Here's how it works: When the sun's heat reaches a planet, its atmosphere will trap some of it. Certain gases help to trap heat better than others. Carbon dioxide and water vapor are the best at doing so.

On Earth, the heating is regulated by other processes (glacial cooling, oceans absorbing heat, etc.). But, Venus's slightly increased temperature upset this balance. Its warmer climate caused a lot of the water there to evaporate. Of course, this made even more water vapor, further heating the planet. And so, a vicious cycle of heating began.

Eventually , all of the water on Venus evaporated. It became like a giant oven, trapping tons of heat and baking its own surface. The end result: Venus is now a terribly hot, inhospitable place.

On Venus, the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. This is the opposite of how the sun appears to move from earth.

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Facts About Venus - Our Solar System - Astronomy for Kids

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The Planet Venus is the second at sunrise. For this reason, it's often called the Morning Star.planet from the sun and the hottest in our solar system directly . It's a dry world whose water has all evaporated due to rampant climate change. Yet, you'd never suspect after seeing it in the sky.

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Kids learn about the planet Venus of the Solar System including fun facts, mass, day, year, and distance from the Sun. Astronomy for kids and teachers.

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Venus - The Nearest Planet to Earth : It is the 6th largest Planet in the Solar System and is the 2nd closest Planet to the Sun.

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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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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. Mercury is the first planet, and closest to the sun.

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

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 about the Roman messenger god that 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.

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.

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 to launch later missions.

2004 Messenger Probe: The probe orbited Mercury for four years, sending an incredible amount of data back to Earth before it crashed into the surface.

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.

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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