Category Astronomy

Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest planet in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with thick bands of brown, yellow, and white clouds. Its atmosphere is made up of hydrogen and helium gas, just like our Sun, and if it was much more massive, it could become a star!

Giant planet

Jupiter is the king of the Solar System. It is an amazing 143,000 km (89,000 miles) wide. Jupiter is so large that all of the other planets could fir inside it!

Juno mission

NASA’s Juno spacecraft is helping scientists to understand how Jupiter formed. It is orbiting closer to the gas giant than any spacecraft has before.

Jupiter’s rings

Jupiter has three thin rings, called the Jovian Rings. They are mostly made of dust and can only be seen when viewed from behind Jupiter, when they are lit up by the Sun.

Beneath the clouds

Any spacecraft that passed through Jupiter’s clouds would be crushed and melted by the huge pressure. Scientists believe that beneath the clouds there is a giant ocean made of liquid metal.

Great Red Spot

One of Jupiter’s most famous features is the Great Red Spot. It is a huge storm, more than three times the size of Earth, that has been raging for hundreds of years!

 

Picture Credit : Google

Between the planets Mars and Jupiter lies the asteroid belt. It is home to tens of thousands of asteroids. These rocky objects are leftovers from the early Solar System, and are too small to be considered planets. They come in different shapes and sizes with the smallest being less than 1 km (0.6 miles) wide. Some asteroids have moons and one even has rings!

Asteroid orbits

Not all of the asteroids in our Solar System are found in the asteroid belt. Some asteroids pass near other planets, including Earth. Asteroids that come close to Earth are called Near Earth Objects. The planet Jupiter even shares its orbit around the Sun with two groups of asteroids, which are called Trojans.

Craters

These craters are nicknamed “Snowman” because they look just like a snowman! They are on Vesta, one of the largest asteroids in the asteroid belt.

Ceres

By far the largest object in the asteroid belt is Ceres. Made mostly of rock and ice, it was the first asteroid ever discovered. It has since been classed as a Dwarf Planet, because it is more like a planet than its neighbours in the main asteroid belt.

 

Picture Credit : Google

Scientists have always longed to explore Mars. They believe that in the past the Red Planet could have been far warmer and wetter than it is now. There may once have even been life on Mars, and tiny life forms, such as bacteria, could live on the planet today. Many spacecraft have already visited Mars and in the future humans will too.

Water on Mars

In 2015, NASA found the strongest evidence yet that liquid water exists on Mars. This was a hugely exciting discovery because scientists looking for life in our Solar System think that where there is liquid water, there could be life.

Curiosity Rover

The six-wheeled, car sized robot lives and works on the planet, operated by a team of scientists back on Earth. Their instructions take about 15 minutes to reach Mars!

Curiosity has 17 cameras on board. As well as taking photos, this camera can fire a laser to clean away dust from Martian rocks!

Curiosity’s robotic arm holds tools for examining the surface. Wide, grippy wheels help the rover travel over bumpy terrain.

 Human exploration

One day people will walk on Mars. Astronauts will see the landscape with their own eyes and become the first humans to walk on another planet. Even if no life is found, reaching Mars will be a crucial step on the way to exploring the wider Solar System.

 

Picture Credit : Google

Like Earth, Mars has seasons. This is because the planets titled at similar angles. Different parts of the planet lean towards the Sun at different times during the year, making it warmer or cooler.

Mars is titled just 1.5  more than Earth, so it has a similar range of seasons. Seasons on Mars last longer because it takes longer for Mars to travel around the Sun.

On Mars there are huge dust storms that last for weeks. So mush dust is kicked up that they can be seen by telescopes on Earth!

Due to the extreme lows in temperature at the poles, 25-30% of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere freezes and becomes dry ice that is deposited on the surface. While the polar ice caps are predominantly water, the Martian North Pole has a layer of dry ice measuring one meter thick in winter, while the South Pole is covered by a permanent layer that is eight meters deep.

 

Picture Credit : Google

Mars has two moons, called Phobos and Deimos, which are much smaller than Earth’s Moon. Their names mean “panic” and “fear”. They were probably asteroids pulled towards Mars by its gravity.

Like Earth’s Moon, Phobos and Deimos always present the same face to their planet. Both are lumpy, heavily-cratered and covered in dust and loose rocks. They are among the darker objects in the solar system. The moons appear to be made of carbon-rich rock mixed with ice. Given their composition, size and shape, astronomers think that both of Mars’ moons were once asteroids that were captured in the distant past.

Compared to our Moon, Phobos and Deimos are rough and asteroid-like in appearance, and also much smaller. In addition, their composition (as already noted) is similar to that of C-type asteroids that are common to the Asteroid Belt. Hence, the prevailing theory as to their origin is that they were once asteroids that were kicked out of the Main Belt by Jupiter’s gravity, and were then acquired by Mars.

 

Picture Credit : Google

Mars is nicknamed the Red Planet because of its rusty soil. Like Earth, it has a rocky surface, polar ice caps, mountains, valleys, and clouds in the sky. However, the fourth planet from the Sun has a far more extreme environment than ours. It is very cold and dry with a thin unbreathable atmosphere.

Mars is approximately half the diameter of Earth, with a surface area only slightly less than the total area of Earth’s dry land. Mars is less dense than Earth, having about 15% of Earth’s volume and 11% of Earth’s mass, resulting in about 38% of Earth’s surface gravity. The red-orange appearance of the Martian surface is caused by iron(III) oxide, or rust. It can look like butterscotch; other common surface colors include golden, brown, tan, and greenish, depending on the minerals present.

Olympus Mons

Towering high above the Martian landscape is Olympus Mons. It is the largest volcano in our Solar System and nearly three times as high as Mount Everest! Olympus Mons is part of a complex of volcanoes that lie along a volcanic plateau called the Tharsis Bulge. This entire region lies over a hotspot, a place in the planet’s crust that allows magma from deep inside to flow out to the surface. While planetary scientists have not recorded a volcanic eruption on Mars in real time, there is evidence of geologically recent flows perhaps in the past few tens of millions of years. It is possible that Mars is not yet volcanically dead.

Valles Marineris

Valles Marineris is a 4,000 km (2500 mile) crack across the surface of Mars, at parts 7 km (4 miles) deep. It is a system of canyons, including the vast Coprates Chasma. The planet has a very primitive form of plate tectonics, and the action of two plates past each other began splitting the surface some 3.5 billion years ago. That set the stage for the formation of the Valles Marineris. At the same time, volcanic activity in the Tharsis region put pressure on the crust as molten lava pushed the region up from below. The combined tectonic activity further broke the crust into fractures and fault regions. In the valleys, the ground sank, and underground water escaped. That caused the ground to drop farther, and landslides and erosion continued to cut away and widen the valley systems. Today, the Vallis Marineris canyons show the marks of ancient floods and continued erosion by the Martian winds.

 

Picture Credit : Google