Our Solar SystemSun:

The Sun is a STAR at the center of the solar system.

The Sun is a medium sized star. Some stars are larger like Betelgeuse, whose size is 500 times bigger than our Sun. Betelgeuse appears smaller in the sky because the Sun is closer to the Earth.

Some planets look larger than stars even though they aren’t. This is because the planets are so much closer to Earth.

Reasons that some stars look larger1. size2. distance

Size

Our Sun is the biggest thing in the solar system. It contains 99.8% of all the mass in the solar system. (If the Sun was the size of your front door, the Earth would be the size of a nickel!)

DistanceOur Sun is about 93 million miles from Earth. Although it’s so far away we still get what we need in order to survive. The Sun produces nearly 400 trillion, trillion watts of energy in the form of light. A small part of this falls upon Earth and makes our planet habitable.

What is the Sun made of?The Sun isn't "made of fire". The Sun is a huge ball of heated gas with no solid surface. The Sun's surface is always moving. Sometimes, storms bigger than the size of Earth can send gas and energy flowing into space.

Life CycleStars like our Sun have a life cycle just like plants and animals.

Other Fascinating facts:

It would take 109 Earths to stretch across the Sun and 1,000,000 Earths to fill up the Sun if it were hollow.Light from the Sun reaches Earth in around 8 minutes.The Sun is only one of millions and millions of stars in the Galaxy.

PlanetsMercuryVenusEarthMars

JupiterSaturnUranusNeptune

The planets orbit around the sun in elliptical orbits because the Sun is the largest object in the solar system and has the most gravity.

The farther away a planet is, the longer it takes for it to travel around the Sun. So Neptune’s year is much longer than Mercury’s.

Some planets have moons that orbit them. The moons orbit the planets because the planets are larger and have more gravity, like the Earth and our moon.

Gravity affects the weight of objects. The more mass of a planet, the more gravity it has, so objects would weigh more on a bigger planet. Your weight on Jupiter would be much greater that your weight on Mercury.

Each planet is unique with its own special characteristics.

Planet Size(Diameter)

Composition (What it’s made of)

Number of Moons

Distance from the Sun

Length of a year

Tilt

Mercury

VenusEarthMarsJupiterSaturnNeptuneUranusIf Pluto isn’t a planet, what is it?! Ceres, Pluto, Eris, Makemake and Haumea are dwarf planets.

Characteristics of a dwarf planet: Orbits the sun. Has enough mass to assume a nearly round shape. Has not cleared the neighborhood around its orbit. Is not a moon

Other Stuff Flying Around Out There

Asteroids

Asteroids are rocky, airless worlds that orbit our sun, but are too small to be called planets. Tens of thousands of these minor planets are gathered in the main asteroid belt, a vast doughnut-shaped ring between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Asteroids that pass close to Earth are called near-earth objects.

Meteors

Little chunks of rock and debris in space are called meteoroids. They become meteors -- or shooting stars -- when they fall through a planet's atmosphere; leaving a bright trail as

they are heated and they glow by the friction of the atmosphere. Pieces that survive the journey and hit the ground are called meteorites.

Comets

Comets are cosmic snowballs of frozen gases, rock and dust roughly the size of a small town. When a comet's orbit brings it close to the sun, it heats up and spews dust and gases into a giant glowing head larger than most planets. The dust and gases form a tail that stretches away from the sun for millions of miles.

Tools and Technology

A telescope is a tool that allows you to see things that are far away. Telescopes gave people the first chance to see things in space more closely. A man named Galileo was the first person to use a telescope to look at the night sky. What he saw

changed our view of the Universe.

Today, telescopes are so powerful that we can use them to get pictures of objects that are very far away. By using telescopes, astronomers have discovered that there are many other things in space besides stars, planets, and moons.

What questions do you have about our solar system?

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