Download THE PLANETS

•Goal: To learn (review?) basic
information about the 8 planets and
the minor planets of our solar system.
•Please be in your seat and have a
pencil or pen.
Notebooks
 FYI – we will be beginning Geology soon, so
if you do not have a notebook anymore (for
whatever reason), or your old one is filling
up, you will want to get a new one by
MONDAY, Feb 3.
 I do not have many more to hand out, so if
you need assistance acquiring a notebook,
please talk me after class or your counselor.
If I asked you to shut your eyes &
think of the solar system, what do
you see?
Size & Distance
 Most diagrams of our Solar System are not to scale
 Also, most diagrams do not include the “minor
planets” or the Asteroid Belt.
 You’ve studied the Solar System in lower grades, so this
is just a review.
 We will create a chart for this information, but first,
look over the next few slides and keep these in mind
while we’re working on this lesson.
Scaled sizes of planets
Distances – notice it stops at Saturn!
Planets & Dwarf Planets
click below FOR a 3:20 video
Planets
 There are eight planets
 The “Inner Planets” – Mercury, Venus, Earth, &
Mars are also called “Terrestrial Planets” (Terra
mean soil)
Planets
The “Outer Planets” – Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, &
Neptune are also called “Gas Giants”
Dwarf (or Minor) Planets
 There are three: Ceres, Pluto, and Eris
 Ceres is the smallest and is located in the Asteroid
Belt between Mars and Jupiter
 You know about Pluto, formerly considered the
ninth planet, now known officially as asteroid
#134340
 Eris is an ice ball, officially knows as 2003 UB313.
It was originally nicknamed Xena after a TV
character.
 These changes happened in 2006
Your chart: “Our Solar System”
 Keep your paper in “Portrait”
Planet/
Bodies
Information
 Use the ruler to draw a line
Mercury
•No atmosphere
•88 day orbit
•8000F to -3000F
about every 1.5 inches
 You can sketch and color
picture of the planet
 It’s OK if you need to
continue on the back of the
paper –
 Headings +8 planets + 3
dwarf planets + 5 others = 16
rows (make 2 columns)
Mercury
 Mercury has virtually no atmosphere. It however has small





traces of an atmosphere .
It takes less than 88 Earth days for Mercury to orbit around
the sun which is its year.
Because of a lack of an atmosphere, the temperature rises
above 800°F while on the dark side it falls rapidly to -300°F.
Mercury rotates slowly on its axis. It completes one rotation
every 59 Earth days which is its day.
The surface of Mercury is heavily cratered, looking much
like our moon.
Mercury does not have a natural satellite (a moon)
Mercury
Venus
 Its atmosphere is made up mostly of carbon dioxide
which causes a run away greenhouse effect and the
planet is around 900 degrees F. It is the hottest planet.
 It takes 243 days to make a rotation and it takes 224
days to orbit around the sun. This makes its day longer
than its year
 The planet rotates from East to West which is called
retrograde rotation.
 Venus does not have a natural satellite (a moon)
Venus

Click for 2 min
video on
atmosphere ->
Earth
 It is made up of approx. 70% water
 Only planet known to contain life
 The densest planet
 Day = 24 hours
 Year = 365.25 days
Earth
Mars
 It is red because there is a lot of iron in the soil
 Mars year = 687 Earth days.
 Nighttime temperatures on Mars can drop as low as
-191°F.
 The thin atmosphere is made of mostly carbon
dioxide.
 Mars has seasons like Earth.
 Mars has two moons.
Asteroid Belt
 The Asteroid Belt is a region between the inner planets
and outer planets where thousands of asteroids are
found orbiting around the Sun.
 More than 7000 asteroids have been discovered.
Several hundred more are discovered each year. There
are undoubtedly hundreds of thousands more that are
too small to be seen from the Earth.

Click above for NASA’s Dawn
Mission to the Asteroid Belt
1:34 mins. Dawn (as of Dec
2013) is halfway from Vesta
to Ceres.
Ceres
 This dwarf planet is one of the
largest asteroids in the Asteroid
Belt
 Scientists describe Ceres as an
"embryonic planet."
Gravitational perturbations
from Jupiter billions of years ago
prevented it from becoming a
full-fledged planet.
 Ceres ended up among the
leftover debris of planetary
formation in the main asteroid
belt between Mars and Jupiter.
Jupiter
 It rotates faster than any planet making the days only 10






hours long.
It is the largest planet.
Its has 67 confirmed moons!
It has the biggest moon in the Solar System, Ganymede.
It has a ring.
The Great Red Spot is a storm that has been going on for
over 300 years.
The Great Red Spot is large enough to contain 2 to 3
planets the size of Earth
Click below for 2:19
video from Bill Nye
on Jupiter’s storm)
Jupiter and moons
Saturn
 It has the lowest density of all the
planets.
 It has over 60 known satellites
 Its rings are made up of billions of
pieces of rocks, ice and dust.
 Titan is the only Saturn moon with an
atmosphere.
Saturn
Uranus
 Uranus is the coldest planet in the solar
system.
 It is tilted completely on its side so the
equator runs north to south because of
impact from an asteroid .
 It is the blue-green planet because of its
methane gas.
 It has rings.
Uranus
Neptune
Neptune is the stormiest planet.
The planet has a system of thin
dark rings .
Neptune has 8 known moons.
Neptune
Pluto
 Pluto, is now considered a "dwarf
planet." A dwarf planet orbits the sun
just like other planets, but it is
smaller. A dwarf planet is so small it
cannot clear other objects out of its
path.
 Pluto travels an oval pathway around
the Sun.
 The dwarf planet has three moons. Its
largest moon is named Charon (KERən). Charon is about half the size of
Pluto.
click below for 3:31 video about minor planets
More Dwarf Planets
 There are more dwarf planets – most beyond Pluto’
 Some have tiny moons
Meteoroids & Meteors
 Meteoroid - any of the small solid
extraterrestrial bodies that hits the earth's
atmosphere
 Meteor - a streak of light in the sky at night
that results when a meteoroid hits the earth's
atmosphere and air friction causes the
meteoroid to melt or vaporize or explode
• Meteorite – any part of a
meteoroid that survives
the fall and reaches the
planet’s surface
Asteroids
 The Asteroid Belt is between
Mars & Jupiter, but asteroids
can be anywhere in the solar
system.
 A class of small bodies in orbit
around the sun.
 They are smaller than planets &
sometimes called minor planets
or planetoids.
 They’re bigger than meteoroids.
Comets
 a relatively small extraterrestrial body
consisting of a frozen mass that travels
around the sun in a highly elliptical orbit
click below for NASA video 3:06 mins
Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud
 The Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud
surround our sun, a star.
 The Kuiper Belt is a doughnutshaped ring, extending just beyond
the orbit of Neptune from about 30
to 55 AU.
 The Oort Cloud is a spherical shell,
occupying space at a distance
between five thousand and 100
thousand AU.
 The first mission to the Kuiper Belt
is New Horizons spacecraft. New
Horizons was launched in 2006 and
will reach Pluto in 2015.
Click below for 4:40 min
video
 Xena was
renamed
“Eris” in
2006
 The Earth is
shown for
size
comparison
What else is out there?
 It seems unlikely that other
planets in our Solar System
support life.
 SETI, the “Search for
ExtraTerrestrial
Intelligence” is an
independent non-profit.
 The mission of the SETI
Institute is to explore,
understand and explain the
origin, nature and
prevalence of life in the
universe.
Any Questions?