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Our Solar System…
• 4 terrestrial planets…
(M,V,E,M)
• then a big asteroid belt…
• 4 gas giant planets…
(J,S,U,N)
• and Pluto, an ice dwarf.
… and here’s a rough idea of just how small we actually are…
…and how gigantically huge the sun is…
…The sun is about 110 times the diameter of the Earth…
… You could fit more than 1000,000 Earths inside it …
… and it’s more than 300,000 times the mass of the earth …
So what other objects do we find in our solar system…?
Moons – it is not just our planet
that has a moon. Many of the
other planets have numerous
moons, and some are even a
similar size to the Earth!
These are the four largest moons of Jupiter:
Io
Europa
Ganymede
and
Callisto
So what other objects do we find in our solar system…?
Satellites – These serve a wide range of uses. They orbit
the planets, just like moons.
observation,
weather
and
land
communication signals, carrying
telescopes like the Hubble Space
Telescope, and much more!
Asteroids
–
These
are
basically large-ish lumps of
rock. They are orbiting the
sun, but are too small to be
considered planets.
Most
of them are in a big “belt”
between Mars and Jupiter.
We use satellites for
monitoring,
relaying
…and comets – basically big lumps of ice and dust.
Comets orbit the sun…
…and they move in massive
elliptical (oval) orbits…
…the tail of a comet can be
longer than the distance from the
Earth to the Sun…
…and in fact comets actually have two tails…
…which point in different directions…
…and what about beyond our solar system…?
…our galaxy is home
to about 100 billion
other stars..!
…and there are around a billion other galaxies
besides ours…!