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Page 1
The
Planets
The Earth’s orbit
2
The nine planets
4
Far and near
8
Big and small
10
Hot and cold
12
Moons
14
Story: School trip to the Moon 15
Activities
27
Bilingual Dictionary
31
Original text by Jade Michaels
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The Earth’s orbit
We live on the Earth. The Earth is a planet. It has
got air we can breathe. 71% of our planet is water.
From space, the Earth looks like a blue ball.
The Earth is 149 million kilometres away from the
sun. It takes one year to go around the sun.
▼
Earth
orbit
1 year
The sun isn’t a planet. It is a star at the centre
of the solar system. It formed 5 billion years
ago from a cloud of gas and dust. The sun’s
diameter is 1,392,000 kilometres. It is much
bigger than the Earth.
2
▼
▼
Sun
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Sun
Earth
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The nine planets
Pluto
(dwarf planet)
There are nine planets in the solar system.
All nine planets go around the sun. The
journey around the sun is called an orbit.
Uranus
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Jupiter
Venus
Mercury
Mars
Sun
Neptune
Earth
Saturn
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Mercury’s orbit
Some planets take a short time to go around the sun.
Mercury orbits the sun the fastest. It only takes 88 days
to go around the sun.
▼
Mercury
Sun
▼
▼
orbit
88 days
Pluto’s orbit
Some planets take a long time to go around the sun.
Pluto takes 247.7 years to go around the sun.
▼
Pluto
(dwarf planet)
Sun
▼
▼
orbit
6
247.7 years
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Mars
Mars is a very exciting planet. It is called the Red Planet,
because it has got lots of red rocks. The largest volcano
in the solar system is on Mars. It is called Olympus
Mons. It is 24 kilometres high and 500 kilometres wide at
the base. It is bigger than Mount Everest. Billions of years
ago there were rivers and lakes on Mars. There is no
water on Mars today, but there are river valleys. The
Mariner Valley is the biggest valley in the solar system.
It is 6.4 kilometres deep and 241 kilometres wide.
Mariner 4 visited Mars in 1965. It was the first spacecraft
on Mars. In 1976, there were two more expeditions in the
spacecraft Viking. Scientists wanted to find aliens there!
But they didn’t find life on Mars. On 3rd January 2004, a
NASA robot landed on Mars. Now we have new photos
of this amazing planet.
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Far and near
Some planets are near the sun. These planets are Venus,
Mars, Mercury and the Earth. Mercury is the nearest
planet to the sun.
Venus is the second planet from the sun. It is the brightest
and hottest planet. We can sometimes see Venus from
the Earth.
Some planets are far away from the sun. These planets
are Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto (the dwarf planet).
Pluto is 5,906 million kilometres away from the sun. It is the
furthest planet from the sun.
Saturn is the sixth planet from the sun. It is the second
biggest planet. Saturn has got beautiful rings made of ice
and rock.
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