Information about neptune

Depending on its orbital position, Neptune is often the eighth, sometimes the ninth planet from the sun. The planet Neptune is the smallest of our gas giants, or the planets in our solar system whose mass is primarily made up of gas. It is, like the other gas giants of Saturn, Jupiter and Uranus, without a well defined surface. Therefore, descriptions such as diameter and volume generally refer to the outermost layer.

Although Galileo first spotted Neptune in 1612, Urbain Le Verrier is credited with the official discovery on September 23rd, 1846. While Galileo believed Neptune to be a star, Verrier proved that it was in fact Neptune the planet. It is named after the Roman god of the Sea.

The composition of hydrogen, helium, and methane gives Neptune its unique blue color. It also has faint rings surrounding the planet. For many years, it was believed these rings were not complete. However, when the Voyager 2 reached the Neptune planet on August 25, 1989, their completion was confirmed. Nine moons have been documented in Neptune’s atmosphere, and 4 more are believed to be present.

Information about uranus

The mysteriously tilted planet of Uranus is one of the 4 gas giants, or planets whose gas composes the majority of its mass. The planet Uranus is the seventh from the sun. Its 51,117km diameter classifies it as the third largest planet in the solar system. By mass, Uranus is the fourth largest.

Despite not being certain how the planet Uranus inherited its 98° axial tilt; we are able to study the effects of this uneven heating. Hypotheses suggest this unique aspect is due to a major collision during formation.

John Flamsteed first recorded the planet in 1690, but believed it was a star. Almost 100 years later in 1781, Sir William Hershel made the formal discovery. Although originally mistaking it for a comet, Hershel quickly corrected his error and established Uranus as a planet. After much debate about what to call it, Uranus was named after the Greek god of the sky.

Although there are no current plans to physically explore Uranus, the planet was visited in 1986 by the NASA spacecraft, Voyager 2. The surface composed of rock and ice is surrounded by an atmosphere of hydrogen, helium and methane. Uranus’ average temperature is -218°C, or -360° F. So far thirteen rings surrounding Uranus have been found. The planet Uranus has 27 moons, each named after Shakespearean characters

Information about saturn

Saturn is the second largest planet in our solar system, making it about 95 times larger than the Earth! The sixth planet out from the sun, it takes Saturn about 29.5 years to orbit the sun one time, traveling a distance of roughly 1,426,000,000 kilometers for one single revolution!

Space.com allows you to discover the planet Saturn like you never have before! Check out our comprehensive articles, photos and interactive features to further explore this distant planet famous for its rings and more than 30 discovered moons!

Learn more about the Cassini spacecraft’s findings of liquid water on Saturn’s moon, Enceladus, and see how this revelation changes the range of sustainable environments for living organisms in outer space. Watch an animation of the Cassini Saturn orbital insertion. Study the latest Cassini findings with our amazing satellite photos of craters, cracks, volcanoes and much more on Titan, which is Saturn’s largest moon. Zoom in on the first radio occultation observation of Saturn’s rings and see them unraveled right before your eyes!

Information about jupiter

Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and is the largest one in the solar system. If Jupiter were hollow, more than one thousand Earths could fit inside. It also contains more matter than all of the other planets combined. It has a mass of 1.9 x 10²⁷ kg and is 142,800 kilometers (88,736 miles) across the equator. Jupiter possesses 28 known satellites, four of which - Callisto, Europa, Ganymede and Io - were observed by Galileo as long ago as 1610. Another 12 satellites have been recently discovered and given provisional designators until they are officially confirmed and named. There is a ring system, but it is very faint and is totally invisible from the Earth. (The rings were discovered in 1979 by Voyager 1.) The atmosphere is very deep, perhaps comprising the whole planet, and is somewhat like the Sun. It is composed mainly of hydrogen and helium, with small amounts of methane, ammonia, water vapor and other compounds. At great depths within Jupiter, the pressure is so great that the hydrogen atoms are broken up and the electrons are freed so that the resulting atoms consist of bare protons. This produces a state in which the hydrogen becomes metallic.

Colorful latitudinal bands, atmospheric clouds and storms illustrate Jupiter's dynamic weather systems. The cloud patterns change within hours or days. The Great Red Spot is a complex storm moving in a counter-clockwise direction. At the outer edge, material appears to rotate in four to six days; near the center, motions are small and nearly random in direction. An array of other smaller storms and eddies can be found through out the banded clouds.

Auroral emissions, similar to Earth's northern lights, were observed in the polar regions of Jupiter. The auroral emissions appear to be related to material from Io that spirals along magnetic field lines to fall into Jupiter's atmosphere. Cloud-top lightning bolts, similar to superbolts in Earth's high atmosphere, were also observed.

Jupiter's Ring

Unlike Saturn's intricate and complex ring patterns, Jupiter has a simple ring system that is composed of an inner halo, a main ring and a Gossamer ring. To the Voyager spacecraft, the Gossamer ring appeared to be a single ring, but Galileo imagery provided the unexpected discovery that Gossamer is really two rings. One ring is embedded within the other. The rings are very tenuous and are composed of dust particles kicked up as interplanetary meteoroids smash into Jupiter's four small inner moons Metis, Adrastea, Thebe, and Amalthea. Many of the particles are microscopic in size.

The innermost halo ring is toroidal in shape and extends radially from about 92,000 kilometers (57,000 miles) to about 122,500 kilometers (76,000 miles) from Jupiter's center. It is formed as fine particles of dust from the main ring's inner boundary 'bloom' outward as they fall toward the planet. The main and brightest ring extends from the halo boundary out to about 128,940 kilometers (80,000 miles) or just inside the orbit of Adrastea. Close to the orbit of Metis, the main ring's brightness decreases.

The two faint Gossamer rings are fairly uniform in nature. The innermost Amalthea Gossamer ring extends from the orbit of Adrastea out to the orbit of Amalthea at 181,000 kilometers (112,000 miles) from Jupiter's center. The fainter Thebe Gossamer ring extends from Amalthea's orbit out to about Thebe's orbit at 221,000 kilometers (136,000 miles).

Jupiter's rings and moons exist within an intense radiation belt of electrons and ions trapped in the planet's magnetic field. These particles and fields comprise the jovian magnetosphere or magnetic environment, which extends 3 to 7 million kilometers (1.9 to 4.3 million miles) toward the Sun, and stretches in a windsock shape at least as far as Saturn's orbit - a distance of 750 million kilometers (466 million miles).

Information about mars

Named after the Roman god of war, the planet Mars is located four planets from the Sun. Commonly referred to as “The Red Planet,” Mars tends to give off a reddish hue when viewed from Earth. This is believed to be caused by an abundance of iron oxide on the planet’s surface. Mars is about half the size of the Earth.

Mars has two moons, Phobos and Deimos, both of which are relatively small in size and not shaped in perfect spheres like the Earth’s moon. Mars can be easily seen from Earth without a telescope at a brightness that is only surpassed by the planet Venus, the Moon and the Sun.

Mars has long been considered the most realistic location for life in our solar system, aside from Earth. Many even believe that intelligent life may have once existed on the planet. Scientific exploration of Mars has not produced any evidence of life on the planet. It is believed that the harsh surface environment and extreme solar radiation that saturates the surface of the planet is not capable of sustaining any kind of life.

Currently, the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity are close to entering their third year exploring the surface of the Mars, gathering images and information so that we may continue to increase our knowledge and understanding of the Red Planet, as well as the possibility of past or future life on Mars.

Information about earth

Earth is the third planet from the Sun. Earth is the largest of the terrestrial planets in the Solar System in diameter, mass and density. It is also referred to as the World and Terra.

Home to millions of species, including humans, Earth is the only place in the universe where life is known to exist. The planet formed 4.54 billion years ago, and life appeared on its surface within a billion years. Since then, Earth's biosphere has significantly altered the atmosphere and other abiotic conditions on the planet, enabling the proliferation of aerobic organisms as well as the formation of the ozone layer which, together with Earth's magnetic field, blocks harmful radiation, permitting life on land. The physical properties of the Earth, as well as its geological history and orbit, allowed life to persist during this period. The world is expected to continue supporting life for another 1.5 billion years, after which the rising luminosity of the Sun will eliminate the biosphere.

Earth's outer surface is divided into several rigid segments, or tectonic plates, that gradually migrate across the surface over periods of many millions of years. About 71% of the surface is covered with salt-water oceans, the remainder consisting of continents and islands; liquid water, necessary for all known life, is not known to exist on any other planet's surface.[note 4][note 5] Earth's interior remains active, with a thick layer of relatively solid mantle, a liquid outer core that generates a magnetic field, and a solid iron inner core.

Earth interacts with other objects in outer space, including the Sun and the Moon. At present, Earth orbits the Sun once for every roughly 366.26 times it rotates about its axis. This length of time is a sidereal year, which is equal to 365.26 solar days. The Earth's axis of rotation is tilted 23.4° away from the perpendicular to its orbital plane, producing seasonal variations on the planet's surface with a period of one tropical year (365.24 solar days). Earth's only known natural satellite, the Moon, which began orbiting it about 4.53 billion years ago, provides ocean tides, stabilizes the axial tilt and gradually slows the planet's rotation. Between approximately 4.1 and 3.8 billion years ago, asteroid impacts during the Late Heavy Bombardment caused significant changes to the surface environment.

Both the mineral resources of the planet, as well as the products of the biosphere, contribute resources that are used to support a global human population. The inhabitants are grouped into about 200 independent sovereign states, which interact through diplomacy, travel, trade and military action. Human cultures have developed many views of the planet, including personification as a deity, a belief in a flat Earth, and a modern perspective of the world as an integrated environment that requires stewardship.

Information about Venus

Venus is the second closest planet to the sun. Viewed from earth it is the brightest of the planets. In fact if you know where to look it is possible to see it in broad daylight. At night it is bright enough to cast shadows. It's brightness is due to two things. Firstly it is quite close to earth compared to the other planets. Secondly it is highly reflective and a lot of sunlight bounces off the planet.

Venus was once thought to be a tropical planet rich in vegetation. It was difficult to find out what the surface of Venus was like because it was always covered in cloud.
In the 1970s American and Russian probes were sent through the clouds to measure surface temperature and analyse the atmosphere. None of these probes lasted very long and the reasons soon became clear. The temperature at ground level was 840 degrees fahrenheit, the atmospheric pressure was 90 times that of earth and the atmosphere was highly corrosive. Basically if you send a probe to Venus it will either melt, be crushed or rust. Not somewhere you would want to park your car!

The extremely high temperatures on Venus seem to have been caused by the high quantities of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which has lead to the greenhouse effect, so an understanding of our sister planet could have profound importance for the future of our own.

Information about Mercury

The planet Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun within the solar system. Mercury was named by the Romans after their god of the same name. Due to its small angular separation from the Sun, which it orbits every 88 days, Mercury is not easily seen from Earth.

At this time, little is known about this comparatively small planet. The only spacecraft to come close to Mercury was Mariner 10 from 1974 to 1975, which was only able to map 40%–45% of the planet's surface.

From the photographs and other information that has been collected, it has been determined that the surface of Mercury is very similar to our own moon, heavily cratered and barren. The magnetic force generated by Mercury’s iron core is only about 1% as strong as that of Earth’s. Temperatures on Mercury can range anywhere from 90 to 700 degrees K!