space

By Tom

THE SUN

• The Sun is very hot indeed! Its surface temp is 6,000 degrees C and the temp at the core is over a banging 14 million degrees C. Without the sun’s rays, life on Earth would die. Plants need the sun’s light to change carbon dioxide and water into the food they need.

MECURY

• Mercury is 400 degrees C at noon and -170 degrees C at midnight. Mercury has zero moons and takes 88 days to orbit the sun. This is mercury's element.

VENUS

• A full rotation of Venus’ axis is 243 Earth days (1 Venusian day.) Venus is the brightest object in the sky besides our Sun and the Moon. Did you know that Venus is sometimes called our twin planet because our similarity in size.

EARTH

• Some people think that earth is the only planet with living things. Earths average distance from the sun is 149,597,870km. The temperature is –68 degrees C to 58 degrees C. The Earth is roughly 4.6 billion years old and the length of year is 365.25 days.

MARS

• Mars’ orbital period is 1 year, 320 days, 18.2 hours and its rotation is 1 day and 0.67 hours. Mars is named after the Roman God of War. Mars has 2 moons called phobos and deimos which look like asteroids. It

JUPITER

• Jupiter is the fastest spinning planet in our solar system it takes just under 10 hours to rotate once. Jupiter is 4.6 billion years old. The Great Red spot is a giant storm as you can see here.

SATURN

• About 764 Earths can fit into Saturn. Saturn has up to 31 known moons. It takes 29.4 Earth years to rotate around the sun. Saturn again is 4.6 billion years old.

URANUS

• It takes 84 Earth years or once every 30,687 days. A day on Uranus is 17.24 Earth hours. However, Uranus spins backwards compared to Earth and most of the other planets.

NEPTUNE

• Neptune has 13 moons that we know of. Neptune is 4.6 billion years old. It would take 12 years and 4 days to get to Neptune and back. Neptune is 4,498,252,900 km away from the sun. A day on Neptune is 16 Earth hours to spin around once. It takes 164.79 Earth years to travel around the sun.

PLUTO

• Pluto’s temp is –387 degrees C to –367 degrees C. Pluto's average distance from the sun is 3,670,050,000 miles (5,906,380,000 kilometres). A day on Pluto is 6.4 Earth days or 153.3 hours long. It takes 247.9 Earth years for Pluto to make one orbit around the sun. Pluto has 3 moons called Charon, Nix and Hydra. Pluto was a planet in the old days but now it’s called a dwarf planet.