SOLAR SYSTEM

By Kelsey Baker

JupiterJupiter is the fifth planet away from the sun!Jupiter is one of the planets that have amoon. Did you know…Jupiter is surrounded by thousands ofKilometres of hydrogen and helium gas!

MARS! The sun appears about halve the size on

mars as it does from Earth The largest volcano in the solar system is on Mars. It is called Olympus Mons.Rocks from Mars have landed on Earth from meteo rite impacts blasting debris through space.

VENUS!

Venus is the second planet away from the sun.

Venus and mercury are the only too planets that don’t have a sun orbiting them.

If you were able to stand on the surface of Venus, it would feel like being 1 kilometre under the sea on Earth, a depth deep enough to sink a submarine. A person or a creature would immediately be crushed by Venus' amazingly strong pressure.

Mercury!

Mercury, named after the Roman messenger to the gods, is the closest planet to the Sun and the smallest traditional planet in the Solar System. It orbits the Sun in 88 days, meaning that for every year on Earth, four years have passed on Mercury. However, because it takes 59 days for Mercury spin once on its axis (one Mercurial day), it takes 176 days for the Sun to completely rise and set over the planet's horizon, compared with the 24 hours it takes for the same thing to happen on Earth. It is because of Mercury's speed across the face of the Sun that it is known as the "Messenger" planet. It's Greek equivalent is Hermes.

EARTH! Earth has a breathable atmosphere. Oxygen is the gas that is

required for the life of most creatures. This is present in Earth's atmosphere and also in water. Oxygen is constantly put into the atmosphere by plants and trees. Earth's atmosphere also contains a small amount of carbon dioxide. This is a poisonous gas which makes up most of the atmosphere of planets like Venus and Mars and makes them unable to support human life. However, its smaller presence on Earth is useful as it helps to moderate the planet's temperature and is absorbed by plants during photosynthesis to produce oxygen. Earth's atmosphere is kept on the planet by its pull of gravity. Mars and Mercury are too small to keep atmosphere. As a result, Mercury has no atmosphere, and Mars' atmosphere is very thin, containing gases which have not managed to escape into space yet. Earth's atmosphere is thick enough to prevent poisonous rays of radiation from getting through it (this is what has happened on Mars).

Saturn!

Saturn is quite often regarded as one of the most beautiful and outstanding objects in the Solar System. It is a gigantic planet with huge rings surrounding it, and a moon which resembles an early Earth! Saturn is named after the Roman god of agriculture and vegetation. However, there is no actual land on Saturn for the planet to possess any agriculture or vegetation. The entire planet, like Jupiter, is made up of gas! It may have a liquid core, caused by immense pressure weighing heavily at the centre and squeezing molecules together into a liquid state, rather than a 'gassy' state, but most of the planet is one gigantic sky!

MOON!

The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite, and is the second brightest object in the sky after the Sun. It is larger than the dwarf planet Pluto, and the fourteenth largest object in the Solar System. Unlike Earth, the Moon's surface is very old, and the craters which are seen all over its surface have been there for billions of years.

SUN!

The sun is a star. The sun is so large that it can hold all

nine planets in the solar system in orbit. The sun only spins on its axis every 25

day’s! The core in the sun is about 15 million ◦c

!

STARS!

A star is a large ball of searing scorching gas, an example would be the sun.

Stars two us are just little balls of light, although they are not actually that small

A star is also a miniature version of the sun.