Planets

1. Planets By: Elizabeth McKayMrs. Edenstrom Period 2

2. Mercury • The Romans named the planet Mercury in honor of their swift messenger of the gods. • Virtually no atmosphere, but some traces of oxygen, hydrogen, sodium, potassium and argon. It has an iron core. • Because of the strong rays from the sun, Mercury has many burned spots and one long strip of the planet is stripped and damaged. • Mercury has no moons, If you are 100 pounds on earth then on mercury you are 37 pounds. The sun looks 2 and a half times larger on Mercury than it does on Earth. • We Have sent up The Mariner satellite, “The first U.S. spaceship was a cone-shaped one-man capsule with a cylinder mounted on top. An escape tower was fastened to the cylinder of the capsule. The blunt end was covered with an ablative heat shield to protect it against the 3000 degree heat of entry into the atmosphere.The Mercury program used two launch vehicles: A Redstone for the suborbital and an Atlas for the four orbital flights.” (http://www-pao.ksc.nasa.gov/history/mercury/mercury-spacecraft.htm)

3. Venus • Named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty. • Extremely hot and deadly atmosphere. Made up of mostly carbon dioxide. • Venus has a longer day than a year, • The clouds of Venus are filled with sulfuric acid. • The planet spins on an opposite axis, meaning the is rotates from east to west. • Numerous space probes have been sent to Venus to gather data, and only a few have landed on the surface.

4. Earth • Our planet is estimated to be about 4.5 billion years old. • The Earth weighs 6,588,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons. • The month of March is longer than September because in that month, the Earth rotates slower on it’s axis • “If the Earth were compressed to a sphere with a 2-inch diameter, its surface would be as smooth as a billiard ball's” (http://www.planetfacts.net/Earth-Facts.html) • Every 60 feet down closer to the Earth’s core the temperature increases by 1 degree. • “Glaciers occupy 5.8 million square miles, or 10 percent of the world's land surface, an area as large as South America” (http://www.planetfacts.net/Earth-Facts.html) • The world is actually not round. It is flatened at the poles and then gets rounded at the equator.

5. Mars • The red planet is red because of rust on the surface and in the atmosphere, The rust comes from the Iron in the planet. • Named by the Romans because of the bloody god of war. • Mars has two moons, Phobos & Deimos. • Similar to Earth, Mars has Ice caps on both of it’s poles. • The thin atmosphere is made up mostly of carbon dioxide. • Large amounts of the planet’s craters and canyons suggest that the planet once had an abundance of water. • Mars is the second smallest planet. • We have sent the rover on planet Mars.

6. Jupiter • Named after the kind of the Roman gods. • The atmosphere of Jupiter consists of about 84 percent Hydrogen and about 15 percent helium, with small amounts of acetylene, ammonia, ethane, methane, phosphine, and water vapor. • Largest planet in our solar system. • Mass is 318 times greater on Jupiter than it is on Earth. • Rotates faster than any other planet in our solar system, it’s days being only 10 hours long. • Jupiter’s great big red spot is a storm that has been going on for 300 years. • It has the largest satellite In our solar system, named Ganymede . Along with 60 other satellites but that are small and faint. • Also has a ring like Saturn and Uranus. • Jupiter sends out a strong radio radiation that is detected on Earth. • Jupiter is covered by an ocean of hydrogen with a sludge-like consistency.

7. Saturn • Second largest planet. • Saturn has the lowest density f all the planets, if there was a body of water that was larger enough to take on it’s mass it would float on top the water. • It’s rings are made up of a bunch of dust and rocks. • Over 30 knows satellites but all are small and faint. • No solid surface, just gas with a solid core. • The gassy core is made up of Hydrogen and Helium. • Galileo was the first to discover Saturn’s rings, He thought they were a bunch of satellites because he could not see correctly through his telescope. • Titan is the Saturn’s satellite with an atmosphere. And is larger than the planet Mercury.

8. Neptune • Neptune is extremely far away from Earth, so much so that when we sent out the Voyager 2, it took 12 years to reach Neptune. • Neptune was named after the Roman sea god. • Neptune is the stormiest planet. Winds on the planet are calculated to sometimes blow at up to 1,240 miles per hour, which is 3 times faster than hurricanes on Earth. • It has a structure of unfinished dark rings that are said to be arks. • It’s color is due to the Methane gas in it’s atmosphere. • Neptune, like Jupiter, Once had a dark spot . • Neptune only gets 1/900 of the power from the sun the we do. • Neptune makes it’s own heat energy. It makes 2.7 times more energy than it gets from an outside force. • Neptune has 8 moons that we know of. • It’s day is 165 earth years. • It’s atmosphere is made up of Hydrogen Helium and Methane. • It’s core is rocky.

9. Uranus • Uranus is named after the Greek god of the sky in Latin. • Because of the way this planet spins some of the contents of Uranus can last for 40 years. • It’s north and south poles are turned toward the sun. • 27 Known satellites. • Uranus and Neptune are both known as Ice Giants. • It is the second least dense planet after Saturn. • The planet was discovered in 1781 by William Hershel. • One of It’s days is 30,685 earth days

10. Pluto: Not a planet • Criteria to becoming a planet: • Must be an object that independently orbits the sun. • It must have enough mass so that gravity pulls it into a roughly speroidalshape. • It must be large enough to "dominate" its orbit (ie. its mass must be much larger than anything else which crosses its orbit. • Pluto was demoted because astronomers decided that it was to small and it and it’s moons are now considered to be just part of the Kuiper Belt. Which is a collection of objects.