Sandoval Students I have added Directions to Schoology, you can ask me questions through there too. I miss you, Make something cool with your knowledge today!
Click here for resources to create cartoons, presentations, powerpoints to show your knowledge of solar systems.
Links to Celestial Objects How the Universe Works International Space Station Live Stream
NASA and the Solar System Orbit Simulator Canadian Defense Minister on Aliens?
Space Games from Nasa Gravity Game ISS Space walk game Planet Game Gravity Inside Einsteins Mind NOVA
Our Solar System
The words solar system refer to a star and all of the objects that travel around it -- planets, natural satellites such as our moon, asteroid belts, comets, and meteoroids. We now know there may be more than 5,000 planets orbiting other stars. Our solar system is part of a spiral galaxy known as the Milky Way. The sun, the center of our solar system, holds eight planets and countless smaller objects in its orbit.
Our solar system formed about 4.6 billion years ago. The four planets closest to the sun -
Mercury,
Venus,
Earth, and
Mars - are called the terrestrial planets because they have solid, rocky surfaces.
Two of the outer planets beyond the orbit of Mars -
Jupiter and
Saturn - are known as gas giants.
The more distant
Uranus and
Neptune are called ice giants.
The Planets
Mercury has a very weak atmosphere.
Venus has a thick atmosphere of mainly carbon dioxide. Similar in structure and size to Earth, Venus' thick, toxic atmosphere traps heat in a runaway greenhouse effect. A permanent layer of clouds traps heat, creating surface temperatures hot enough to melt lead. Glimpses below the clouds reveal volcanoes and deformed mountains. Venus spins slowly in the opposite direction of most planets.
Jupiter and Saturn are composed mostly of hydrogen and helium.
Uranus and Neptune are composed mostly of water, ammonia, and methane, with icy mantles around their cores.
The Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft visited the gas giants, and Voyager 2 flew by and imaged the ice giants.
Pluto is a dwarf planet along with Ceres, Eris, Haumea, and Makemake. They have similar compositions and are solid with icy surfaces.
Two NASA spacecraft have are exploring
dwarf planets - the Dawn mission arrived at Ceres in March 2015 and the New Horizons mission reaches Pluto in that same year in July. After Pluto, New Horizons will explore deeper into the
Kuiper Belt.
Galilean Moons of Jupiter
How do Moons effect our planets? Do you notice anything about Jupiter's moons compared to others?
