The Solar System By Joanna Dougan What is

The Solar System By Joanna Dougan

What is the Solar System? The solar system is made up of planets, moons, stars, asteroids, dwarf planets and comets. In our solar system there are 8 planets, one large star (the sun) 5 dwarf planets, 181 moons, over 150 million asteroids, 6619 known comets and an unknown amount of small stars.

What are the planets? In our solar system there are 8 planets. Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn Uranus and Neptune. The first 4 (Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars) are rocky planets. Ones where it could be possible to walk on – that is if there isn’t any thing stopping you from getting onto the planet of course. The rocky planets of any solar system tend to be the ones closest to the large star. The rocky planets are made up of metal and rock. The other 4 planets are gas planets. Gas planets tend to be further away from their solar system’s large star. In our case the sun. Gas planets are made up of nothing but gas. On these planets it would be impossible to stand up. This is because on these planets the surface isn’t solid. Also every gas planet has rings. Some you can see and some you can’t. Like for example you can see Saturn’s rings but Jupiter looks like it doesn’t have any.

My mnemonic for the planets M. Magnificent M. Mercury V. Vineyards V. Venus E. Each E. Earth M. Make M. Mars J. Juicy J. Jupiter S. Stuff S. Saturn U. Underneath U. Uranus N. Night skies N. Neptune

What are the moons? Our solar system has 181 moons. They all orbit around one planet. Although some asteroids do have one or two moons. Mars has 2 moons, Earth has 1, Jupiter has 67, Saturn has 62, Uranus has 27 and Neptune has 13. Our moon is called The Moon or sometimes Luna. Mars’ moons are called Phobos and Deimos. I won’t say the other planet’s names as there are too many. Also Mercury and Venus don’t have moons because they are to close to the sun’s gravity to hold onto their moons.

What are asteroids? An asteroid is a piece of rock and metal in outer space that is in orbit around the sun. Asteroids may differ in size from a few feet across to lots and lots of miles in width. Most of the solar system’s asteroids are not round, but are uneven and look a bit like gigantic, black potatoes. Whilst orbiting the Sun, they also flip and spin. As well, some asteroids have moons but not all.

What are comets? Comets are bits of dusty, icy, rock which orbit the sun. They originate from the outer solar system – beyond Neptune. Most comets can take a million years to form. When the very first comets were made they were from the leftovers of when the solar system was made.

How did the solar system originate comic strip. The Sun was formed from a gigantic cloud of gas. Then, Jupiter and Saturn came. Around now asteroids started to form. Finally Earth and the rocky planets formed. The far-away Oort cloud is It is said that comets then full of leftover ice. brought water to Earth. A few icy bits of rock become moons. The solar system is finished!

Did you know? Moons can have moons. Yes! Not in our solar system but according to the internet some moons have moons and our moon should have a moon. For thousands of years humans had no idea the solar system existed and believed that Earth was at the centre of the Universe! The Solar System originated around 4. 6 billion years ago. The Sun holds most of the solar system's mass, with Jupiter and Saturn making up a lot of the rest, with the rocky planets make up a very small bit of the Solar System’s mass.

The End! Thanks for watching/reading!