Download Venus is named after the Roman goddess of love and

By Chloe McClenaghan and
Charis Wilson!
• Mercury is the closest planet
to the Sun. Its surface has
many thousands of impact
craters as a result of being
bombarded by objects since
the solar system's early
days. Since Mercury has no
protective atmosphere, the
temperature on the surface
ranges from extremely hot
on the side facing the Sun to
extremely cold on the side
that faces away from the
Sun. Mercury is the closest
planet to the Sun.
•
Venus is named after the
Roman goddess of love and
beauty. This is one of those
cases where beauty is only skin
deep, though, as the surface
of Venus is a very unpleasant
place featuring very high
temperatures, winds that blow
hundreds of miles per hour and
an atmosphere of sulfuric acid.
Venus is an example of runaway
greenhouse effect on a
planetary scale.
Earth is the third planet from the
Sun and is the largest of the
terrestrial planets in the Solar
System, in both diameter and
mass. It is also referred to as
"the Earth", "Planet Earth",
"Gaia", "Terra", "the World", and
"the Blue Planet".
• Our home planet is a very
interesting place. From space, it
looks like a big blue marble, with
the constantly changing cloud
patterns giving our home planet an
ever changing appearance. There
are a number of things that make
our planet unique in the solar
system.
•
• The Red Planet is named after
the Roman god of war. It's
distinctive rust colour is easily
seen through a small telescope.
The surface of Mars features
many mountains, canyons and
even polar ice caps that look a
lot like those here on Earth. In
ancient times, Mars may have
harboured some kind of life,
and there is a lot of research
going on now trying to get a
definitive answer as to whether
we are the only life forms in
the solar system.It is the fourth
planet from the Sun.
•
Jupiter is the Fifth planet
from the Sun and the largest
planet in our solar system. It
is two and a half times as
massive as all the other
planets in our Solar system
combined.It has at least sixtyone moons and features the
Great Red Spot, which is a
huge "storm" that has been
observed from here on Earth
for over three hundred years.
Jupiter is a gas planet so it is
very extremely hard to land
on.
•
Saturn is one of the most
beautiful planets in the solar
system. It's fascinating system
of rings have been a source of
wonder since we first saw
them with the earliest
telescopes. Although the rings
look fairly simple through a
small telescope, spacecraft
pictures have revealed that
what looks like two rings
through a telescope is actually
hundreds of individual ring
systems. In addition, Saturn
has so many moons that it is
like a miniature solar
system.Saturn is the sixth
planet from the sun.
• Uranus is one of the giant
gas planets in the solar
system. Its mysterious bluegreen colour provides very
few clues as to what is going
on underneath the surface
clouds. Uranus also has a
very faint ring system that
we didn't know existed until
the planet was visited by the
Voyager spacecraft. It is the
seventh planet from the
Sun.
Neptune was the last
stop the Voyager
mission made before if
left our solar system.
What we found out
from Voyager was that
Neptune has winds
that blow hundreds of
miles per hour and a
moon that features
"geysers" of nitrogen
that erupt and leave
dark marks on the
surface. Neptune is the
eight's planet from the
Sun.
•
Pluto is so far away that even the
mighty Hubble Space Telescope
can't get us a very good picture.
The image at right is the best
image to date we have of this
distant world. Very little is known
about Pluto except that it is very,
very cold and exceptionally dark.
Pluto was discovered in 1930 by
Clyde Tombaugh, It was Hard
naming the planet, but they
eventually settled on Pluto. The
dwarf planet is named for the
Roman god Pluto, which is the god
of the underworld in Roman
mythology.Pluto is the last planet
from the sun.