MERCURY
Smallest planet in our solar system, is only slightly larger than Earth's moon.
Mercury is covered with craters because it has very little atmosphere to stop impacts
.Very hot during the day, hundreds of degrees below zero at night.
Distance from the sun: About 36 million miles.Year: About 88 Earth days.
Day: About 59 Earth days.
VENUS
Venus is a dim world of intense heat and volcanic activity.
Similar in structure and size to Earth, its toxic atmosphere traps heat in a 'greenhouse effect.'
.Venus spins slowly in the opposite direction of most planets.
Distance from the sun: About 67 million miles.Year: About 225 Earth days.
Day: About 243 Earth days.
EARTH
Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the fifth largest in the solar system.
Our home planet is the only planet in our solar system known to harbor living things.
.Earth orbits around the Sun, which is a star
All of the planets, except for Earth, were named after Greek and Roman gods and goddesses. However, the name Earth is an English/German word, which simply means the ground.MARS
Fourth planet from the Sun and is the second smallest planet in the solar system.
Often called the “Red Planet” due to its reddish appearance.
.Terrestrial planet with a thin atmosphere composed primarily of carbon dioxide
Distance from the sun: About 141.6 million miles.Day: Roughly 40 mins longer than an Earth day.
JUPITER
Two and a half times more massive than all the other planets in the solar system combined.
It is made primarily of gases and is therefore known as a “gas giant”.
.Jupiter has the shortest day of all the planets.
The Great Red Spot is a huge storm on Jupiter.
It has raged for at least 350 years. It is so large that three Earths could fit inside it.
SATURN
Sixth planet from the Sun and the most distant that can be seen with the naked eye.
Saturn is the second largest planet and it has a gas giant and is composed of similar gasses including hydrogen, helium and methane.
Distance from the sun: About 36 million miles.Year: About 29.5 Earth years.
Saturn is the flattest planet due to its low density and fast rotation.
Saturn is made mostly of hydrogen.
Saturn has 150 moons and smaller moonlets.
URANUS
Uranus was officially discovered by Sir William Herschel in 1781.
Uranus turns on its axis once every 17 hours, 14 minutes and it rotates in a retrograde direction, opposite to the way Earth and most other planets turn.
.Often referred to as an “ice giant” planet, it has a hydrogen upper layer, which has helium mixed in.
NEPTUNE
Eighth planet from the Sun making it the most distant in the solar system.
Neptune may have formed much closer to the Sun in early solar system history before migrating to its present position.
.Neptune is the smallest of the ice giants.
Large storms whirl through its upper atmosphere, and high-speed winds track around the planet at up 600 meters per second.
PLUTO
Discovered in 1930, Pluto is the second closest dwarf planet to the Sun and was at one point classified as the ninth planet.
It is the largest dwarf planet but only the second most massive,
Pluto was reclassified from a planet to a dwarf planet in 2006.
Pluto was discovered on February 18th, 1930 by the Lowell Observatory.