The Solar System

In a nutshell

Our Solar System contains the Sun where eight planets, several dwarf planets and several asteroids orbit around it. The Sun is the largest object in our solar system, and it's gravity holds everything together. Satellites, such as Moons, orbit the planets.

The Solar System

Our Solar system consists of eight planets orbiting the Sun. There used to be nine planets, however Pluto was re-named a Dwarf Planet, due to it's small size. There are some other dwarf planets in the solar system and asteroids.

Science; Earth and space; KS2 Year 5; The Solar System

1.	The Sun
2.	Mercury
3.	Venus
4.	Earth
5.	Mars
6.	Jupiter
7.	Saturn
8.	Uranus
9.	Neptune

The Sun

The Sun is a large luminous ball at the heart of our Solar System and it is the biggest object in it. The Sun is so large, it's gravity holds the Solar System together, with the planets orbiting around it. The Sun is $4.5\ million\ years\ old$ , and the temperature of its core can reach a whopping $15\ million\ \degree C$ !

The planets

A planet is a spherical object, that orbits a star. Some planets are made of rocky material, whereas others are made of gas.

Earth is currently the only known planet to have stable amounts of water. Scientists suspect other planets may have had water at some point, or are yet to confirm whether liquid water exists on them.

Order from the Sun	Name of Planet	Relative size compared to Earth	Average distance from the Sun ( $millions\ of\ km$ )
$1st$	Mercury	$0.4$	$58$
$2nd$	Venus	$0.9$	$108$
$3rd$	Earth	$1.0$	$150$
$4th$	Mars	$0.5$	$228$
$5th$	Jupiter	$11.0$	$778$
$6th$	Saturn	$9.4$	$1430$
$7th$	Uranus	$4.0$	$2870$
$8th$	Neptune	$3.8$	$4500$

The planets in the Solar System have unique features. The table below explains what each one looks like.

Name of planet	Planet description	image
Mercury	A rocky grey planet covered in craters
Venus	Thick clouds in atmosphere, with rocks on surface
Earth	Liquid water covers most of the planet, with rocky continents
Mars	A dusty red planet, which gets it's colour from rusting metal
Jupiter	The largest planet in the Solar System and it is a gas giant. It has bands of colour on it's atmosphere
Saturn	The second largest planet which is also a gas giant with thin rings made of ice and rock
Uranus	Another gas giant which is blue in colour due to methane in it's upper atmosphere
Neptune	The furthest out gas giant, deep blue in colour

Hint: A useful way to remember the order the planets is to use this anagram or you could come up with your own!

My	Very	Easy	Method	Just	Speeds	Up	Naming
Mercury	Venus	Earth	Mars	Jupiter	Saturn	Uranus	Neptune

Satellites

The definition of a satellite is an object orbiting a planet. Therefore, the Moon is a natural satellite. The other planets also have their own moons, in fact, Saturn has $82$ .

There are man made satellites orbiting above planet Earth right now, which allow us to use the internet, watch television and use our phones.