Presentng...Space
By:Brooke Preston
The Planets
The eight planets are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. All planets in our soar system orbit around the Sun. The planets are round due to it's own gravitational pull. All planets have cleared smaller objects out of it's orbit.
The Inner Planets
The inner planets are Mercury,Venus,Earth and Mars. They are the four smallest planets and are the four closest to the sun.Theese planets are solid,rocky, have thin atmospheres and few moons.
The Outer Planets
The four outer planets are Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. The outer planets are known as the "Gas Giants" .They are called this because they are the four largest planets in our solar system and are also mainly made of gas. These planets also have the most moons and are spaced out farther than the inner planets.
How The Planets Orbit
All eight planets travel around the Sun in a circular orbits.All planets travel in their own orbit and all orbits are different sizes. Each planet it able clear smaller things out of it's orbit.How large the orbit is is determined on how much gravitaional pull the Sun has on that planet and how much it has on the sun.The Sun is the largest object in our solar system so it has th most gravitational pull on everything in solrar system.The reason all of the planets are at different places in our orbit is because some have mmore mass than others so they have different gravitational pulls.
Rotation and Relolution
The Rotation of a planet is like one day one Earth. It is the complete rotation of our Earth on it's axis. Every planet's rotation is different. The revolution of a planet is how long it takes it to travel around the Sun. A revolution for Earth is what we call a year. All planet's revolutions are different. The farther from the Sun a planet is the longer the revolution ,the closer to the Sun the shorter the revolution.
Galilean Moons
The Galilean Moons were discovered by Galileo in 1610.They are the four largest moons orbiting Jupiter .The names of the moons are Io,Europa,Ganymede and Callisto. The discovery of these moons helped prove that Earth is not the center of the universe. It also showed the importance of the telescope.
Asteroids
Asteroids are made of leftover rocks and matter. Most asteroids are very small but some are very large. Some asteroids are so large they are named dwarf planets. There is a circle of asteroids that lies in between Mars and Jupiter. We call it the asteroid belt. The only difference between an asteroid and a meteor is the size.
Comets
It usually takes up to thousands of years for comets to orbit once. All comets travel in an oval shaped orbit. Comets are made of dust , rock and frozen compound. Comets can come in many different sizes and all have tails. The tails of comets always face away from the Sun. These tails make the comets look like shooting stars.
Meteors
Meteoroids are small rocks that are constantly shooting around in space .They are only called meteoroids when they are in space. They are called meteors when they are in the atmosphere, and when it reaches the surface it is called a meteorite. When meteors come down in large groups we call it a meteor shower.