The Solar System | Our Planets

Do you Know? The sun is the brightest and largest object in the sky. It is huge. It is about 333,000 times heavier than earth and can fit more than a million earths inside it! Its a great mass which has a large gravitational force.

This keeps the sun, the planets, their moons and some other smaller bodies together as the sun's Family.

The sun and all the bodies moving around it is together called the Solar System. All the members of the solar system revolve around the sun in almost circular paths or better known as Orbits.

PLANETS

After the sun, The planets are the largest bodies in our Solar System. Many Scientists defined the planets as a round body that Orbits the sun..

There are eight planets in our solar system. In order of their distance from the sun they are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

An easy way to remember the sequence is

My Very Efficient Mother Just Served Us Nuts.

Apart from all of these planets, The closest to the sun are Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. They all are small, rocky planets also called Terrestrial Planets. The other four- Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are mainly made up of gasses and are huge in comparison. They are called Jovian Planets.

Mercury

It is the smallest planet of our solar system. It revolves around the sun in the fastest speed. But it rotates on its axis at a much slower speed. A day on Mercury is about 55 times longer than the Earth. The temperature on mercury can be as low as -190 degree Celsius.

Venus

The thick atmosphere of Venus makes it the Brightest and the hottest planet of the Solar System. its atmosphere is mainly made of carbon dioxide gas which reflects a lot of sunlight. Venus takes 243 days to complete one rotation which makes its day the longest in the solar system. A day in Venus is longer than its year!

Earth

The earth is the only planet where life is possible. The atmosphere of the earth traps enough heat to ensure that the nights on Earth do not become freezing cold.

Mars

No other planet evokes so much interest as Mars does. This is because scientists have found evidence that liquid water once flowed through the channels visible on its surface. The Mars is also known as the red planet. When visible, Mars looks like a red sphere in the sky.

Jupiter

Jupiter is the largest and the heaviest planet of our solar system. It also has the largest number of moons. ( about 63) In 1979, a spacecraft named Voyager 1 discovered faint rings around Jupiter. Jupiter is also visible to the naked eye. It looks like a bright spot in the sky.

Saturn

Saturn is easily recognisable because of its prominent Rings. These rings are actually the particles of dust and ice. also, a large number of moons revolve around this planet.

Uranus and Neptune

Uranus and Neptune are the third and fourth largest planets respectively. They were the last two planets to be discovered. Even today, we know very little about them.

Thanks for reading...

Picture is taken from

gettyimages.com

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