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Earth and Space Science
Part 5 of 6

A solar system is a group of objects in
space that move around a central star.
(The Sun)

A star is a burning sphere of gases.
The sun is a star.

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
The sun is the largest
object in the solar
system.
The sun is larger than
the rest of the objects
in the solar system put
together.
The next largest object
is the planet Jupiter.

Some of the sun’s energy reaches the
Earth as light and some reaches the
Earth as heat.
The dark areas
on the sun are
called sunspots.
 They are cooler
than the rest
of the sun’s
surface and
don’t give off
much light.


A planet is a large object that moves
around a star. There are 9 planets and
they revolve around the sun.
The time for one
complete orbit by a
planet around the sun is
its year.
 It takes Earth 365 days
to orbit the Earth.
 It takes Mercury 88
days to orbit the sun.
 It takes Pluto 250 Earth
years to orbit the sun.
Therefore, 1 Pluto
year=250 Earth Years!

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Moons are
satellites that
orbit a planet.
All of the planets
have at least one
moon.

Asteroids and comets are other objects
that move around the sun.

Asteroids are
small and
rocky. Some
scientists
believe that
asteroids are
pieces of a
planet that
never formed.

A comet is a
small mass of
dust and ice
that orbits
the sun in a
long, ovalshaped path.

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A Solar Eclipse occurs when
the moon goes in front of
the sun and blocks most of
the sun's light from the
Earth.
During a total eclipse all
you can see from earth is a
ring of light around the
moon which is part of the
sun the moon did not cover.