The solar system
Solar System
The Solar System is the collection of eight planets and their moons in orbit around the sun, together with smaller bodies in the form of asteroids, meteoroids, and comets. The Solar System formed around 4.6 billion years ago.
This is a video about the planets and a little about the solar system
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The moonsOf the terrestrial (rocky) planets of the inner solar system, neither Mercury nor Venus have any moons at all, Earth has one and Mars has its two small moons. In the outer solar system, the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn and the ice giants Uranus and Neptune have numerous moons.
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The planetsThe eight planets consist of Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. The smallest planned is Mercury, and the largest planet is Jupiter. The planet farthest away from the sun is Neptune, and the planet closest to the sun is Mercury. The planets in order from smallest to biggest is Mercury, Mars, Venus, Earth, Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, and Jupiter. Click below to find out more about the planets:
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AsteroidsAn asteroid is a small rocky body orbiting the sun. They are made up of rock or metal. Around a million asteroids are located between Mars and Jupiter in an area called the “asteroid belt.” The first asteroid discovered was Ceres, discovered by Giuseppe Piazzi in 1801. Earth suffers an impact from an object the size of a football field about once every 2,000 years.
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CometsA comet is a celestial object consisting of a nucleus of ice and dust.The nucleus of a comet is made of ice and can be as small as a few meters across to giant boulders a few kilometers across
When it is near the sun, a “tail” of gas and dust particles point away from the sun. Comets have two tails: a dust tail (which you can see with the naked eye) and a plasma tail, which is easily photographed but difficult to see with your eyes. |