Wikijunior

Solar System

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Table of Contents
Introduction............................................................................................................ 1
Solar System......................................................................................................... 2
The Sun................................................................................................................. 5
Mercury................................................................................................................ 11
Venus.................................................................................................................. 15
Earth.................................................................................................................... 22
Moon................................................................................................................... 28
Mars.................................................................................................................... 35
Mars/Phobos....................................................................................................... 40
Mars/Deimos....................................................................................................... 43
Asteroid belt........................................................................................................ 46
Jupiter.................................................................................................................. 49
Jupiter/Amalthea................................................................................................. 54
Jupiter/Io.............................................................................................................. 55
Jupiter/Europa..................................................................................................... 56
Saturn.................................................................................................................. 59
Saturn/Mimas...................................................................................................... 63
Saturn/Enceladus................................................................................................ 65
Saturn/Titan......................................................................................................... 66
Uranus................................................................................................................. 67
Neptune............................................................................................................... 70
Pluto.................................................................................................................... 73
Pluto/Charon....................................................................................................... 76
Comets................................................................................................................ 77
Kuiper Belt........................................................................................................... 81
Oort Cloud........................................................................................................... 83
About gravity, mass, and weight.......................................................................... 85
How the Solar System was born......................................................................... 89
Glossary.............................................................................................................. 91
GNU Free Documentation License..................................................................... 93
 Introduction
General Introduction
This is a project of Wikijunior, a collection of free books written especially for kids
to learn about science and nature. Many people have been involved with writing
this book. This project is hosted on Wikibooks, and you are encouraged to help
participate with writing and editing these books.

What This Book Will Cover

There are several short articles that will cover each of the planets and many
other bodies of the Solar System. Information that will be interesting to kids will
be discussed. In addition, some general topics will be added that aren't
specifically about an individual planet or moon of the Solar System.

Page 1
 Solar System
People have been watching the sky for thousands of years and wondered
exactly what is out there. With advances in telescopes as well as spaceships
which have physically traveled to various planets, a considerable amount of
knowledge has been obtained to better understand the universe near to us.
The name of our system comes from the old latin word for the Sun: Sol. Because
the Sun is the largest object in the system and all the other bodies orbit around
it, it became known as the Solar system.

What is the Solar System?

At the center of the Solar System is the Sun. This is but one of billions of stars in
the sky, but is important to us as it gives us warmth and energy for us to use.
There are many worlds that are near the Sun, each of them are as different as
you can possibly imagine. All of these worlds that either orbit the Sun or orbit a
planet going around the Sun make up what we call the Solar System. As you
read each of the sections about these different worlds, we will explore the
differences between all of these worlds, and hopefully you will understand how
unique and special the Earth is as well.
There are a total of nine planets in our system. The inner-most planet is called
Mercury. This is followed by Venus and then our Earth. Beyond Earth is an
orange-hued planet called Mars. In the outer part of the system are four giant
planets called Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. The outermost planet is a
small world named Pluto.
Our system also includes many other bodies. The moons are small worlds that
orbit the planets, in much the same way as the planets orbit the Sun. There are
also a lot of much smaller objects called asteroids. These are big chunks of rock
or metal that are mostly found orbiting the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. We
also get visitors from the cold outer edge of our system that are called comets.
These are big lumps of ice and dust. Comets can form immense tails when they
come close to the Sun and start to melt.
The solar wind is a hot gas that erupts from the sun and flies away into space.
This gas travels past the planets into outer space. The place where this gas
reaches the very thin gas between the stars is at the edge of the solar system.
This bubble of gas is about 100 times as far from us as the Earth is from the
Sun. Beyond that is a lot of empty space. The nearest star to the Sun is
thousands of times further away than the size of the entire Solar System. It's a
very, very big universe out there.

Page 2
Who discovered it?
Prior to 1781, there were only seven known bodies in our solar system, besides
the Earth. These seven were the Sun, our Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter,
and Saturn. These had been known since humans first began to observe the sky
at night. There were also visitors called comets that would appeared in the sky
for a time, then fade away.
The Babylonians believed that each of these objects was related to a different
deity, and their calendar used a seven-day week. The practice of naming the
seven visible objects of the solar system still continues to this day. Each of the
English words for the day of the week comes from an old name for a god or
goddess. In English this is a mixture of both Norse and Roman gods, but in other
languages the connection to the Roman names of the planets is more apparent.

Spanish
Weekday Object Related Norse Diety
equivalent
Sunday Sun Domingo
Monday Moon Lunes
Tuesday Mars Tyr Martes
Wednesday Mercury Woden (also Odin) Miércoles
Thursday Jupiter Thor Jueves
Friday Venus Frige (also Freyr) Viernes
Saturday Saturn Sábado

Galileo Galilei first turned a telescope on the sky and began to write down what
he saw. Among the things he saw were four moons orbiting Jupiter. As time
passed and the telescope was improved, more objects were found. In 1655,
Christiaan Huygens discovered the moon Titan orbiting Saturn. In 1781 Sir
William Herschel discovered the planet Uranus. In 1801, Giuseppe Piazzi
discovered the first asteroid. Many more asteroids were later discovered by
astronomers.
The discovery of the planet Neptune did not come by chance, but was found
using math. Astronomers had made tables of where each body should appear in
the future. But Uranus did not match the predictions. So a model was made to
account for the difference. This model predicted that the gravity from an
unknown planet was pulling on Uranus. The model also predicted about where
the mystery planet would be found. This planet was then found in 1846.
The last planet Pluto was later found in 1930 using the same method.

Page 3
How was it formed?
Our Solar System is part of a much larger system called the Milky Way. This is a
vast mix of dust, gas, stars, and other objects that is called a galaxy. Our galaxy
rotates about the center, and if you could see it from a long, long way off it would
look like a wispy pin-wheel.
Within our Milky Way galaxy are clouds of dust and gas where stars are born.
Our Solar System was created in just such a cloud. A part of this cloud began to
collapse under the pull of its own gravity. As it got smaller, it formed a big,
spinning disk of gas and tiny particles of dust. This disk was thickest at the
middle, and this part slowly collapsed to form the early Sun.
The remainder of the disk continued to rotate about the Sun in the center. The
tiny particles of dust were now close enough so that they would often collide, and
some of these would stick together. The bits of dust would slowly collect to form
grains. These would in turn join to form lumps the size of gravel, then pebbles.
As the objects grew in size, a few grew larger than the rest and began to pull on
the other rocks with their gravity. The rocks grew ever bigger, reaching the size
of mountains which crashed together with powerful force. In the end there were
only a few massive bodies left, which swept up the rest of the disk to form the
planets, moons, and asteroids.
While this was going on, the Sun began to glow from the huge energy released
by its own collapse. The temperature at the center of the Sun reached a million
degrees, and it turned into a furnace that could create more energy by smashing
tiny atoms together. This energy rose up to the surface and was emitted as light,
heat, and other forms.
This energy being emitted by the Sun swept away any surviving tiny particles
and gas from the inner Solar System, leaving behind only the larger objects.

What will happen to it?

About four thousand million years from now, the Sun will have used up most of
fuel. It will begin to enter the final stages of its life. It will expand into a huge star
called a Supergiant. The size of this star will be so big that several of its planets
will be inside, including the Earth. These planets will be burnt to a crisp inside the
very hot atmosphere.
Eventually the sun will begin to throw off its outer atmosphere, forming an
immense sphere of faintly glowing gas that astronomers call a planetary nebula.
The sun will then shrink down into a small star called a white dwarf. This will be
about 100 times as small as the current sun we see. It will then slowly begin to
cool and grow ever fainter over time.

Page 4
 The Sun
The Sun is a large ball of very hot gas, mostly Sun Facts:
hydrogen and helium. It is the power house of
the Solar System. It's our nearest star. • The Sun is
Scientists can tell what is going on inside a really a star.
• If the Sun blew
star from its color. Without the sun there
would be no life on Earth. We depend on the up, it would
sun for energy. take about 8 minutes
before anyone noticed.
• It produces light and heat
energy needed for life.
• Every second, over 4
million tons of material is
converted into energy
through nuclear fusion.
• The equator of the sun
rotates much faster than
areas closer to the solar
"poles".
• Never look directly at the
sun without filters. A
passing glance will cause
temporary blindness, and
This picture was taken with a special filter that looking at the sun without
shows the complex magnetic fields generated by special filters in a
the sun. The loops of gas extending out from the telescope will cause
sun are called prominences.
permanent blindness in
How big is the sun? your eyes.

The Sun is very big - much, MUCH bigger than the Earth! It is 1,392,000 km or
109 Earths across and contains more than 99.9% of the solar system's mass. If
you could somehow stand on the surface of the Sun, you would weigh 28 times
as much. A grown person would weigh as much as a car.
More than a million Earths could fit into the volume of the sun! It doesn't look that
big from where we stand, though. That's because the sun is about 150,000,000
km away. At that distance, it takes light from the sun over eight minutes to reach
the Earth. Compared to other stars, the sun is about average-sized.

What happens inside the sun?

The sun is the main source of energy for the earth. This energy is released deep
within the sun in a process called atomic fusion. Four hydrogen atoms are fused

Page 5
together to make one helium atom. The helium atom has slightly less mass than
the four hydrogen atoms; the extra mass is converted to energy. This is the
same way energy is released in a nuclear bomb called a hydrogen bomb. The
diagram below shows what scientists think is going on inside the Sun. The
colours are to show the different regions.
Core: The center of the
Sun is very dense. It's
about 12 times as dense
as lead. It's also very hot -
about 15 million °C. This
region is where most of the
nuclear reactions are
taking place.
Radiation Zone: In this
zone the light, heat, and X-
rays produced in the core
fight their way out towards
the surface. The gases
that make up the zone are
still very dense and keep absorbing and emitting the rays. Have you ever tried to
run through water? That's what it's like for light waves in this region of the sun. It
can take a single ray of light a million years to make its way out of this zone.
Convection zone: Have you ever seen the air shimmer above a fire? Perhaps
you've been told it's because "heat rises"? Well actually heat doesn't rise all by
itself. It is the hot air that is rising. Hot gases tend to rise, cold gases tend to sink.
In this outer region of the sun the gases are less dense and so behave more like
ordinary gases that we see on Earth. At the bottom of the convection zone the
gas gets heated up by the energy that is coming through the radiation zone from
the core. This gas rises up to the surface of the sun where it gives up its heat
and cools down. The now cold gas then sinks back down. The plumes of rising
hot gas and sinking cool gas together form huge ribbons of circulating gas known
as "convection cells".

What are sunspots?

Sunspots are slightly cooler areas on the surface of the sun
that appear as dark areas. They only appear dark against
the brightness of the rest of the surface of the sun. Despite
their appearance, they are still extremely bright — brighter
than an electric arc. The number of sunspots seen rises and
falls over an 11 year cycle.
The dark areas are Sunspots appear when the Sun's magnetic field is
called sunspots. concentrated, impeding the flow of energy. A typical sunspot

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consists of a dark region, called the Umbra, surrounded by a lighter region,
called the Penumbra. The Umbra is about 2000 °C (3600 °F) cooler than the
photosphere and only looks dark in relation to its surroundings. Spots usually
form in groups which are carried across the solar disk by the Sun's rotation.
Over a period of about 11 years, sunspot numbers increase before decreasing
slowly. This sunspot cycle happens at about the same time as the increase and
decrease in the Sun's overall activity.
The most complex sunspots are hubs of intense magnetic fields. These active
regions can suddenly erupt as flares that are short-lived, extremely bright areas
that release large amounts of charged particles and radiation. Flares are more
prevalent during peaks in solar activity.

What is the solar atmosphere like?

The part of the sun that you see in the sky is called the photosphere. This is
where the pressure from the gases inside the sun is low enough that they no
longer glow so bright, and is generally considered the "surface" of the sun.
Everything that is below the photosphere gives off light. The photosphere is also
the very top of the convective zone of the sun. It is on the photosphere that you
see sunspots.
While you can say that the atmosphere of the sun begins at the photosphere, in
reality the entire sun is one very large ball of gases, where there is no definite
beginning or end to the gases from the Sun. Because the Sun is so hot, gases
from the sun are constantly streaming outward and form various parts of the
solar atmosphere, which extends beyond even the orbit of Pluto. These gases
near the Earth are very thin, with so little in the way of gas pressure that you can
basically call it a vacuum, but it still is enough that it pushes away gases from
other stars in our galaxy. It is only until you get to the heliopause that you can
say that the influence of the Sun's atmosphere ends.
Various parts of the solar atmosphere are as follows:

Prominences and Solar Flares

When you look at the sun through a telescope (with

special filters so you eyes don't get damaged!), at the
sides of the photosphere there appear to be large
eruptions of gases like it was from a volcano. Each of
these is called a prominence. There have been
several kinds of prominences, but all of them are very
large. Ones you can see are hundreds of kilometers
long, and the largest was almost 400,000 kilometers.
A closeup view of a sunspot and That is almost twice as far as the moon is from the
prominences from the TRACE
Earth. These prominences are related to sunspots,
spacecraft

Page 7
because they are often seen as coming from a sunspot. The largest of these
prominences sometimes become so large that they leave the sun entirely, and
that is when they become a solar flare.

Chromosphere

When early astronomers viewed the sun during an eclipse, they noticed that
there was a brief flash of light immediately before and after the eclipse. Instead
of being a steady white light, it seemed to be a rainbow spectrum of all of the
colors you can see, which is what gives the chromosphere its name. It is not as
bright as the photosphere, which is why you normally don't see it during the day,
but only during an eclipse.

Corona

Even more faint than the photosphere or chromosphere is

the corona. This is a region extending from the
chromosphere and gradually becoming a part of the solar
wind throughout the rest of the solar system. The reason
why the corona glows is because the gases in the corona
are actually hotter than the surface of the Sun! The reason
why this happens is still a mystery to scientists, but there
Solar Corona during an
are several theories for what is happening. The corona will eclipse in 1999
shift and change, sometimes very rapidly over minutes or
hours, due to changes from the sun itself. Because the photosphere is so bright,
it is difficult to observe the corona except during an eclipse even with advanced
scientific instruments. Some telescopes in space are making it easier to observe
the corona, but it is still something that scientists are trying to understand.

Solar Wind

As the corona gets further from the sun, it is still "blowing" against all of the
planets in the solar system. This is called the solar wind. While the gas
pressure is very low, it still is enough that some very light objects and other
gases are pushed away with the solar wind. For other astronomical object, this is
visible with the two comet "tails", where one "tail" is mainly rocks and dust, with
the other "tail" composed of gases. This second tail is being pushed by the solar
wind and causes its effect.
In 1960, the Satellite Echo I entered orbit and was one of the largest satellites
ever put into space, in terms of volume. Basically it was a large ballon that was
inflated by a small amount of gases inside. Because it was so light but also very
large, its orbit was substantially affected by the solar wind and other solar
pressures. Even more compact satellites still have to take solar wind into
account when planning orbits and how long a satellite will stay in orbit.

Page 8
In the future, solar sails will use the solar wind and light pressure in order to
travel between planets, where spaceships use sails instead of just using rocket
engines.

Zodiacial Light

If you travel to a place very far away from any cities and
look up at the night sky, a very faint glow will come from a
band across the sky in roughly the same part of the sky
that you see the other planets. This is not the Milky Way,
which is also visible, but even more faint than that. This is
actually sunlight which is reflected off of dust and Zodiacial Light with an
meteoroids that are found throughout the ecliptic plane. Aurora
This dust is the remains of comets and asteroids colliding
with each other and eventually falls into the sun over millions of years.

Heliopause

The Heliopause is what can largely be considered

the edge of the solar system. This is where the solar
wind slows down and stops (or "pauses") due to the
"solar wind" coming from other stars in the galaxy.
There is a region just inside the heliopause where
the solar wind slows down from supersonic speeds
(literally, faster than sound) to subsonic speeds.
A diagram of where the heliopause This creates a slight jolt in the electrical systems of
is located spaceships that was detected by the Voyager I
spaceship in May 2005, which was the first man-
made object to ever travel this far from the Sun. Since this is so far from the Sun,
this is a part of astronomy that scientists are still trying to study and there is
much more that needs to be learned about this part of the solar system.

What is solar weather?

Solar weather is a new science, but something that has a huge impact on a
number of things here on the Earth. When a solar flare is produced on the sun, it
includes a large amount of plasma, or very hot gases. If this flare then heads
toward the Earth, it will cause a number of problems, including blackouts on
electrical power systems in large cities, communications disruptions with radio
transmitters and satellites, and potentially even death if an astronaut is caught
unprotected when a large solar storm comes from that flare. Normally the
Earth's atmosphere protects you and I from direct effects of these flares.
These solar flares also cause something called an aurora. This is also known as
the "Northern Lights" or "Southern Lights" (depending if you are closer to the

Page 9
north or the south pole) where the plasma interacts with the atmosphere of the
Earth and the Earth's magnetic field. Normally you can only see this event when
you are close to one of the poles, but sometimes a very powerful solar flare will
produce an aurora that can be seen as far south as Mexico, or as far north as
Southern Brazil, or South Africa.
The aurora is not unique to the Earth either. Aurora have been seen on all of the
planets except for Mercury and Pluto by telescopes and space probes. The
aurora on Pluto have not been seen because it is so far away and no space
probes have ever been there, and Mercury doesn't have an atmosphere (that is
substantial).
Just like there are weather forecasts for weather on the Earth, there are weather
forecasters that study solar weather and try to predict when solar storms will
come. Not only do they study just what will happen near the Earth, but they also
try to predict what is going to happen in other parts of the solar system as well.
As more space missions go into other parts of the solar system, this will become
even more important. To help make the predictions, they also study the sun
itself, and try to determine in advance when a solar flare will occur.

Page 10
 Mercury
Mercury Facts:
Mercury is the closest
• Mercury orbits
planet to the sun. It is a
terrestrial planet and the sun faster
the second smallest than any other
planet after Pluto. Only planet.
one spacecraft has • Mercury's surface temperature
flown by Mercury, can vary from -300° F (-180°
Mariner 10, which was C) to 800° F (430°C).
launched by the U.S. on • Radar observations suggest
November 3, 1973. that there is frozen water on
Much of what we know Mercury's north pole.
about this planet came from this mission.

Mercury from Mariner 10

How big is Mercury?

Mercury is about 4879 km in diameter, which makes it a
little over a third as big as the Earth is across. It's small
enough that eighteen balls of modeling clay the size of
Mercury could be rolled together to make one the size of
Earth. In fact, the diameter of Mercury is only about one Comparison of the size of
and a half times the diameter of our moon. It is the Mercury to the Earth
second smallest planet in the Solar System, just larger
than Pluto. The small size and how close it is to the Sun sometimes make it
difficult to observe Mercury in the sky, especially without a telescope or
binoculars.

Page 11
What is its surface like?

View of the surface of Mercury

Mercury has craters like those on the Earth's moon. They were made when
asteroids or comets crashed into the surface. The largest crater we've seen on
Mercury is the Caloris Basin. It is about 1350 km in diameter and was caused
when a huge asteroid, probably about 100 km wide, hit Mercury about 4 billion
years ago.
The surface also has big cliffs called scarps. They were made long ago when
Mercury cooled down and shrank. This shrinking caused the surface to get
wrinkled in some places, which created the scarps.
There are also plains. Some of them may have been made by lava flows long
ago. There may also be water ice on both of Mercury's poles. The poles, like
Earth's, get very little warmth from the Sun, so the ice doesn't melt or evaporate.
It gets very hot during the day and very cold at night on Mercury. It's so hot
during the day (430°C, hot enough to melt tin!) because Mercury is so close to
the sun. At night, however, it gets down to -180°C, much colder than Antarctica
in winter. It loses almost all of its heat during the night because Mercury has very
little atmosphere, which would normally help to keep in the warmth.

What is its moon like?

Mercury does not have a moon. Mercury's rotation is so slow that if Mercury had
a moon, it would crash into Mercury or get broken up. This would happen
because the moon's gravity would cause tidal effects on Mercury. There would

Page 12
be two bulges called tidal bulges on Mercury. One would bulge toward the moon,
with the other bulge being on the opposite side of Mercury. The moon's motion in
its orbit would be faster than Mercury's rotation because Mercury's rotation is
very slow. That would cause the moon to be ahead of the tidal bulge all the time.
The gravity from the bulge would pull back on the moon. This would cause the
moon to become closer to Mercury and Mercury's rotation to speed up. This
would continue to happen over millions of years until the moon got broken up by
Mercury's gravity or crashed onto Mercury. Mercury had existed for billions of
years, so if it had any moon, it is long gone.

How long is a day on this planet?

Mercury rotates much slower than Earth. Its day is 58.6 Earth days long.

How long is a year on this planet?

Mercury is the planet with the shortest year in the solar system. It is about 88
Earth days long, roughly one quarter of an Earth year. This means that an eight-
year-old person would be 32 years old on Mercury. One interesting thing about
Mercury is that there are three Mercury days for every two Mercury years.

What is it made of?

Mercury has a large iron core for a planet of its size. The planet contains a larger
portion of iron than any other planet in the solar system. The outer layer of the
planet is made of silicates, which are ordinary rocks.

How much would Mercury's gravity pull on me?

If you were on Mercury, it would pull you down with a force about one third as
strong as the force of Earth's gravity.

Page 13
Who is it named after? Mythology
Not only was Mercury the messenger of
In Roman mythology, the gods, he was also the god of buying
Mercury was the and selling. His name probably comes
messenger of the from the Latin word mercator, which
gods. He wore a hat means "merchant."
and sandles with
wings on them, Mercury had his own day of the week,
allowing him to travel dies mercuri, or "Mercury's Day". In
around the world France it is mercredi. In English we
extremely quickly. The named this day after a Norse god,
planet Mercury was Woden, making it "Woden's Day", or
Artistic depiction named after him Wednesday.
of Mercury
because it orbits
around the sun faster than any other planet in the Solar System, traveling nearly
50 km every second!

Page 14
 Venus
Venus Facts:
• Venera 7, the
first space probe
to land on Venus,
was put out of
action by the hostile
conditions on Venus after
only 23 minutes.
• With a few exceptions, the
surface features on Venus are
all named after women.
• A day on Venus is longer than
a year there.

Venus is the second closest planet

to the sun, and was named after the
Venus (in the visual spectrum)
Roman goddess called Venus. It is
in a category called terrestrial
planets, this means that it is very similar in size and was created close to the
same way as our planet Earth. In fact, sometimes it is called Earth's "sister
planet" as they are somewhat alike in both size and roughly a similar distance
from the Sun.

How big is the planet?

Venus is very close in size to earth and with a
diameter of about 12,100 km or almost 95% of the
size of the Earth. This is one of the reasons why
Venus is often considered to be the "twin" to the
Earth. It is also made up of very similar minerals to
those found on the Earth. Earth and Venus Comparison

Page 15
What is its surface like?

Picture from the Russian Spacecraft Venera 13 on the Surface of Venus

Venus has a very interesting surface. It is very, very dry and also hot enough to
melt lead on its surface. We could not survive on the planet because of this.
Anyone attempting to walk on the surface of Venus would boil to death, be
squashed flat by the air pressure, and then have their remains eaten away by the
corrosive atmosphere. Dispite all of this, there are some features on the surface
of Venus that are surprisingly similar to features on the Earth.
River-like channels have been formed on Venus. It is
believed that these channels are formed from erupting lava
that takes a long time to cool down, and flows down into
the lower elevation areas of Venus. Similar rivers of lava
have been seen in Hawaii and other volcanoes on the
Earth, but the longest of these lava channels on Venus is
over 7,000 km long and sometimes as wide as one to two
km. That is by far longer than any river on the Earth,
including the Nile, Amazon, or Mississippi rivers!
Channels on the surface of
One of the more unusual
Venus bearing
resembelance to a riverfeatures to Venus that seems
channel on the Earth to be unique only to Venus so
far is what are called
arachnoid volcanoes, or simply arachnoids. When
scientists first saw images of these features, it
reminded them of pictures of spiders or ticks,
although these features were hundreds of
kilometers across. These are volcanoes that due to An Arachnoid volcano on the
the environmental conditions on Venus have formed surface of Venus
very differently from other known volcanoes
throughout the rest of the Solar System. The exact process that formed these is
still not completely known and an area of future exploration on Venus.
Other more normal volcanoes have been found on Venus as well, and the
interior of Venus appears to be almost as active as the interior of the Earth.
Almost 90% of Venus's surface is made up of recently-solidified basalt lava,
meaning that Venus has experienced a lot of volcanic activity from time to time.
The oldest parts on Venus are thought to be only around 800 million years old.

Page 16
 Parts of the surface of Venus appear to be
structurally similar to continents on the Earth, with
the largest of these called Istar Terra, named after
the Babalonian equivalent of Venus. Deep basins
like the ocean basins on the Earth have also been
discovered, except that they are totally empty of
water. Features like mountain ranges and Meteor
craters have also been found on Venus. One of its
highest mountains, named the Maxwell Montes, is
Maat Mons on the Surface of roughly 2 km taller than Mount Everest. Because
Venus, by radar imaging
Venus has a very thick atmosphere, meteors slow
down as they fall toward it's surface, so no craters that are smaller than about
3.2 km round can form, according to current theories, and none have been
discovered.

Is there life on Venus?

When astronomers first tried to make observations of
Venus, they thought that Venus would have a very
Earth-like environment, although slightly warmer than
the Earth. Venus is almost the same size as the Earth,
and covered with clouds, and it was assumed that
these might be water clouds like are found here on the
Earth.
Many stories written during this time described Venus
as having a swamp-like environment, but still The Venera 13 Lander, which
something that people could go and visit someday, and made scientific measurements
even live on. Sometimes exotic aliens were thought to and pictures from the surface of
live on Venus, just like people thought the same thing Venus
about Mars.
The debate on whether there were living things on Venus continued until robotic
spacecraft traveled to the surface of Venus and directly measured the thickness
of the atmosphere, what chemicals it contained, and the temperature. The
environment on Venus is deadly to almost any living thing on Earth, and it is
unlikely that manned exploration of its surface will ever happen. Spaceships that
land on Venus must be very strong in order to work with the very high
atmospheric pressures on its surface, and to withstand the acids in the
atmosphere. One of the gases found on the surface is Sulfuric Acid, which is the
same chemical that is used in car batteries, and very toxic if you eat or breathe it.
There are many other chemicals that are just as deadly if you were to breathe
them in.

Page 17
Phases of Venus
After telescopes were invented, one of the
very first places that they tried to study was
Venus. Even with a modest telescope this is
a fairly easy feature to identify. Just like the
Earth's Moon has phases during different
times of the month, Venus also appears to
go through similar kinds of phases where it
appears in a crecent shape during some
parts of its orbit around the Sun. This visual
appearance is caused because Venus is
closer to the Sun than the Earth, and we are looking at the night sky of Venus, or
the part of Venus that is facing away from the Sun.
This is slightly different than the phases of the Earth's Moon, because the
distance between the Earth and Venus varies quite a bit. When Venus is at its
closest point to the Earth, it appears as a thin crecent or even can't be seen at
all. Only when Venus is almost at a location furthest from the Earth can a full
disk be seen through a telescope.
Sometimes on rare occasions, Venus actually crosses
directly between the Sun and the Earth. This is called a
transit, which is very similar to a solar eclipse by the
Earth's Moon. Many early details about Venus were
discovered this way, including approximately how large
Venus was, and the fact that it had an atmosphere due to
how "fuzzy" the outline of Venus was against the Sun.
During a transit of the Sun, Venus appears as a small circle
going across the Sun's photosphere.

What is its moon like?

Early in history Venus was once thought to have a moon, named Neith after the
mysterious goddess of Sais. The moon was first seen by Giovanni Domenico
Cassini in 1672. Astronomers saw this moon from time to time until 1892, until
they found out their sightings were mostly faint stars that were in the right place
at the right time. Venus is now known to be moonless.
Venus's rotation is so slow that if Venus had a moon, it would crash into the
planet or get broken up. This would happen because the moon's gravity would
cause tidal effects on Venus, which would create two bulges called tidal bulges
on Venus. One would bulge toward the moon, with the other bulge being on the
opposite side of Venus. The moon's motion in its orbit would be faster than
Venus's very slow rotation. That would cause the moon to be ahead of the tidal
bulge all the time. The gravity from the bulge would pull back on the moon. This

Page 18
would pull the moon closer to Venus and make Venus's rotation speed up. This
would continue to happen over millions of years until the moon got broken up by
Venus's gravity or crashed onto Venus. Venus has existed for billions of years,
so if it had any moon, it is long gone.

How long is a day on this planet?

Venus rotates even more slowly than Mercury. One siderial day on Venus is
about 243 Earth days long. This is the time it takes for a distant star to go from
being directly overhead to being above you again. One solar day on Venus is
about 117 Earth days long, or the time it takes for the sun to be over one spot on
Venus to returning to that same position. The reason for this difference is that
Venus is also going around the Sun at the same time it is turning. There is a
difference between sideral and solar days on the Earth as well, but because the
Earth is spinning so quickly compared to Venus it is only a difference of a few
minutes each day instead of over a hundred days like it is on Venus.
It also rotates the opposite direction from most of the planets in the Solar
System. This is called retrograde motion, where the Sun rises in the west and
sets in the east, from the viewpoint of somebody standing on the surface of
Venus.
This rotation period is also rather unusual because of an interesting coincidence
with this orbital period and the Earth. Venus always seems to have the same
side of its planet facing the Earth as it passes close to the Earth, almost as if
Venus had a tidal lock on the Earth like the Earth's Moon. From the perspective
of somebody standing on Venus, Earth would always be in the same spot in the
sky year after year. What causes this behavior from Venus is totally unknown,
and may be a pure luck, but many scientists often discover new ideas by
studying a coincidence like this.

How long is a year on this planet?

One Venus year is 224.7 Earth days long. So, one Venus day is longer than one
Venus year. There is an interesting coincidence with this period of time as well,
because from one conjunction between the Earth and Venus to the next one
(when the Earth and Venus are closest together and on the same side of the
sun) is 584 days. What is unusual about this number is that it happens five times
every eight years on the Earth, in a pattern that is very close to the same orbital
time period of the Earth around the Sun.
25 x 117 (Earth days in a Venus solar day) = 2925 days
5 x 584 (Earth days between conjunction of Earth and Venus) = 2920 days
8 x 365 (Earth days in an Earth year) = 2920 days

This was known to ancient astronomers and played an important part in the

Page 19
design of many ancient calendars, including some eight year cycles where the
pattern that Venus followed in the sky was watched very closely. There is no
current scientific theory to explain this coincidence other than it just happened to
be like this.

What is it made of?

Like Earth, Venus appears to have have a crust and mantle made of silicates
and an iron core. There are a number of features on the surface of Venus that
resemble features found on the Earth, so it is likely that many of the internal
characteristics of both the Earth and Venus are the same.

How much would Venus's gravity pull on me?

If you were on Venus, it would pull you down with a force about nine tenths as
strong as the force of Earth's gravity. In terms of the effect of gravity when on the
surface of Venus, it is almost identical to what happens to objects and people
when they are on the Earth.

What is the future for exploring Venus?

Because Venus is so close to the Earth, and
reveals many clues regarding how the Earth
works, it is going to be studied even closer in
the future. There are several proposals to
have spacecraft travel to Venus and then
deploy a balloon that would allow scientific
intruments to travel in the atmosphere. In
fact, two of these have already been sent to
Venus, called Vega 1 and Vega 2. These
Russian spacecraft measured the
composition of the atmosphere of Venus and
relayed other important scientific information. An artists depiction of what a future mission
There are plans now for even more to Venus may look like
advanced spacecraft, with perhaps even a
motor on the balloon that would turn the spacecraft into an airship. In some very
far reaching proposals there is a suggestion that perhaps a high-altitude balloon
could even have people on board. Scientists studying Venus could live high in
the clouds where the atmosphere isn't nearly so hazardous to people, with
research being performed in a manner similar to how scientific research is
currently conducted in Antarctica right now.

Page 20
Can Venus be Terraformed?
An interesting debate is occuring right now about the possibility of Venus being
changed into conditions similar to what the Earth is like right now. That is called
Terraformation, or the formation of Earth-like worlds. While in theory it could be
done, it would require incredible financial resources in order to accomplish, and
there are some people who even question if it should even be done at all. While
the concept is largely something science fiction authors talk about, it is a topic
that is now beginning to enter into discussions with scientists who study this
planet, at least in terms of speculating just how such a task might be
accomplished. It is also argued by some scientists that we on the Earth are doing
the opposite and Venusforming the Earth with pollution and the release of
greenhouse gasses, turning the environment of the Earth to be more like Venus.
Certainly the ideas that would be gained from trying to figure out how to increase
the absorbtion of greenhouse gasses that make Venus so hot and inhospitable
to life can have long term positive benefits for people here on the Earth.

Who is it named after?

Venus is named after the Roman goddess of love. It looked bright
in the sky sometimes, so it was named after the beautiful
goddess. The planet Venus is also associated with the Greek
goddess Aphrodite, as well as Frigg and Freya in Norse
mythology. Indeed, almost every ancient culture associated the
planet with a major deity, although not all of them were female. An
example of the planet being named after a male diety is Artistic
Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli, one of the Aztec gods, together with his representation of
brother Xolotl. In Aztec society the morning and evening stars Venus
were considered seperate dieties rather than the same object as
Greek and Roman societies thought of them.

Page 21
 Earth
Earth Facts:
• The Earth is the
only planet in the
known universe
which is capable
of supporting life as we know
it.
• Some of the heat in the Earth's
mantle actually comes from
the breakdown of radioactive
material. The pieces of rock
and metal that collected to
make the Earth brought in the
The Earth seen from space rest of the energy when they
Earth is the planet we live on. It is the only fell onto the planet.
planet in the solar system with liquid water. It's also the only one known to have
life.

How big is the Earth?

The Earth is 12,742 km in diameter. It's the largest terrestrial planet in the solar
system. The Earth weighs 5,973,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kg. (That's
nearly 6 trillion trillion kilograms)

How old is the Earth?

Scientific evidence shows that the Earth is 4.6 billion years old.

What is its surface like?

Moraine Lake by Lake Louise Alberta, Canada

Earth's surface is made of continents and oceans. There are also islands in the
oceans. The top layer of Earth is called the crust. It divided into pieces called
tectonic plates. They move very slowly, carrying continents with them. The

Page 22
places where they meet are called fault lines. On fault lines, magma can seep
up through the cracks and create volcanoes (once on the surface it's called
lava.) When fault lines move apart they create new land (these are called
constructive margins) and where they move towards each other one of them
goes underneath the other (these are called destructive margins.) When they
slide past each other, great tension builds up due to friction - when this tension
is released the plates move rapidly and sharply in one direction, creating
earthquakes.

Anawhata beach, west of Auckland, New Zealand

Earth has many kinds of environments. It is cold and icy in places like
Antarctica. There are hot, dry deserts in some parts of the world like Africa and
Arabia, and cold, dry deserts in some others like Siberia. Rain forests grow
where it is warm and wet, in equatorial zones (these are areas a few hundred
miles around a very hot 'line' called the equator. Outside equatorial zones there
are areas of very dry, mostly hot desert, which is where all the water making the
rainforests wet comes from, causing these areas to be very dry. Other kinds of
forests grow between the Equator and the Poles, like the massive coniferous
forests of pine and other trees which keep their leaves all the time, and
deciduous forests of oak, beech and other leaf-losing plants. Some places are
very wet and are called swamps or marshes. There are grasslands, many hot,
some called savannahs, with lots of grass and few trees. There are also
mountains, caused by collision of tectonic plates. Some of them are high with
snow and ice on their tops all year. Others are lower and more rounded.

Is there life on the Earth?

When this question is asked on other planets in the solar system, it is important
to know where you might find living things here on the Earth. Almost every
important feature of the surface of the earth is in some way affected by living
things, including mineral deposits and even the content of the air that we
breathe.
One of the critical ingredients that all living things seem to need is water.
Wherever you find liquid water, you will almost always find living things, even if it
is not a place where you would want to live as a person. Bacteria has been found
inside gysers, where the water temperature can be over 300° C. These living
things not only live there, but even seem to need those very high temperatures.
Other living things have been found on the bottom of the ocean, living around
"thermal vents" where the only energy they obtain is from lava heating up water.
It is so deep in the ocean that no sunlight ever appears there. Finally, you can
find living things in Antarctica where it is always covered with ice, or even at the

Page 23
top of mountains in the form of lichens, growing where otherwise nothing else
could live.
Is the Earth unique because only this planet could
have living things growing on it? It would seem unlikely
that this is the only planet in the Universe that has
living things like we know them, and it is suspected that
there are many other places in the Solar System where
life might be. If liquid water is discovered anywhere
else in the Solar System, you might just find some
living things there too. There are other worlds in the
Solar System where liquid water indeed has been
found, so many scientists continue to look for signs on
life on other planets.
An interesting experiment was conducted in Galileo being deployed after
December, 1990, where the Galileo spacecraft, on a being launched by the Space
journey to Jupiter, went past the Earth after having Shuttle Atlantis
gone on a orbit around the sun earlier. In this situation, the scientists who were
running the space probe decided to test the equipment to see if they could detect
signs of life on the Earth. In addition to simply taking pictures of the Earth, it also
detected signs of water, oxygen, and other elements and chemicals that are
necessary for life. This information was then used to both see if these same
instruments could detect life elsewhere, and to calibrate the instruments to
make more accurate measurements when it arrived at Jupiter.

What are its moons like?

Earth has one permanent moon named Luna, or more commonly called the
Moon. Earth also has a number of temporary natural satellites, the largest of
which is the three-mile-wide body named Cruithne [pronounced 'KROOee-nyuh'].
Discovered in 1986, Cruithne follows an eccentric horseshoe-shaped orbit that
takes 770 years to complete.

How long is a day on the Earth?

A day on Earth is 24 hours long (solar) and 23 hours 56 minutes (sidereal). It is
how long it takes the Earth to spin once on its axis.

How long is a year on the Earth?

A year on Earth is 365 days long. It is how long it takes Earth to orbit the sun
once.

Page 24
What is it made of?
The Earth has a crust and
mantle made of silicates and
an inner and outer core. The
crust is the surface layer. It is
up to 5 km deep under the
oceans and up to 35 km deep
under the continents. Despite
being so thin, scientists have
not ever drilled all the way
through the crust. The mantle
extends from the bottom of the crust down to 2900 km under the surface. Under
the mantle there is the liquid iron outer core. It extends from 2900 to 5100 km
under the surface. At the center of Earth there is the solid inner core. It is made
of iron and nickel.

How much would I weigh on Earth?

It's easy to find your weight on Earth by using a scale. You have weight because
the Earth pulls you towards its center. (Normally, the ground or the floor get in
the way, making you feel 'stuck' to them.) This force is known as gravity.
..... There are several kinds of scales:

1) Comparing of 2 masses (weights). You put the thing(s) you want to weigh on
one pan (like some marbles), and then you put several "weights" on the other
pan until the pointer shows that both pans have equal weights on them. Then
you look at the pan with the known weights on it, and add them all up. The total
is the mass of the thing(s) you want to weigh.

Page 25
2) A spring balance usually has a hook on it, with a pan. You put the thing(s) you
want to weigh on the pan, the spring is pulled, and the greater the weight, the
further the spring is pulled. That distance, calibrated in pounds or kilogram (or
whatever), is usually shown either on a dial or on a linear scale.

3) There are also electronic scales that give a properly calibrated reading—
grocery stores, for example, use these.
NOTE: gravity varies slightly depending on the location where you want to get
the weight; spring balances and some electronic scales can, in theory, read
slightly different weights at different places because of that, but usually in
practice that difference it too small to be noticed. But, because the balance type
of scales work differently to the spring or electronic types, they will always read
the true, correct mass. The would even give the same mass on the moon!
(where gravity is much less than on Earth)

Did you know? that Sir Isaac Newton was the

first person to realise that the force pulling you
down to the ground was the same force that
keeps the planets going around the sun? The
story goes that he thought of this when he saw
an apple fall from a tree.
Gravity is a very important force. As well as
keeping you firmly stuck to the Earth, it keeps
the Moon going round the Earth, The Earth
going around the Sun and the Sun going
around the center of the Milky Way galaxy.
Gravity also makes stars and planets a nice round ball shape. In fact without
gravity there wouldn't even be a sun, moon or earth. (The material that they are
made of would just float away into space)

Page 26
Who is it named after?
The word earth is used for both planet Earth and soil.
Other names had been used for Earth such as Gaia
and Tellus. Gaia is the Greek god of Earth. Tellus is
the Roman name of the same god.

The Earth seen from the surface

of the moon

Page 27
 Moon
Moon Facts:
• Until Luna 3
sent back photos
in in 1959, no
one knew what
was on the far side of the
moon.
• The Moon is nearly twice as
big as Pluto, the smallest
planet.
• The "man in the moon" isn't
always a man--the people of
Mexico see a rabbit!
The moon is our nearest neighbour in space.
• The Moon and the Earth are
The Moon is Earth's only permanent natural sometimes refered to as a
satellite. Twelve people landed and walked binary planet system, or as
on it in the 1960s and 1970s. They collected two different planets that
and brought back rocks that were studied to orbit each other, because of
find more about the Moon. how large the Moon is
compared to the size of the
How big is the Moon? Earth.

The Moon is 3,476 km wide. This is

just over a quarter of Earth's diameter.
That makes the Moon a relatively large
one. Most other planets are much
larger than their moons. Because of
this, Earth and the Moon had been
called a double planet.

What is its surface like?

The Moon does not have any air or
liquid water. There is no life on the
Moon. During the day it becomes very
hot. At night it grows icy cold. A person
going to the Moon needs an air supply
and a special suit.
The Moon has many craters. The
largest one is the South Pole-Aitken Astronaut Harrison Schmitt collecting lunar samples
Basin that is on the far side and in the during Apollo XVII

Page 28
south hemisphere. It is 2,240 km across. Some of the craters have bright rays
around them. They were made by material thrown up by the impacts that made
the craters. Those craters are the younger ones. The bright rays of older craters
faded because of impacts of tiny meteors over millions of years.
There are dark areas called maria. They are soldified lava flows that filled up
large craters long ago. Most maria are on the near side and there are only a few
on the far side. There are also lighter-colored highlands. The surface is covered
by dust called regolith. It is thinner on the maria and thicker on the highlands.
The Moon's regolith was made by pieces of rock that got thrown up by impacts.
There might be water ice in the floors of craters near the south pole. The
bottoms of those craters are always dark because they are in the shadows of the
crater rims. The ice came from comets that hit the Moon.

How long is a day and a year on the Moon?

It takes the Moon 27.3 Earth days to rotate once and to make one orbit. So, the
Moon always keeps the same side faced towards Earth. That side is called the
near side. It is the side with lots of maria. The other side is the far side. Nobody
saw the far side until it was photographed in 1959 and first seen by astronauts in
1968.

What are the phases of the Moon?

The Moon looks different at different times. This happens because the Sun lights
up different parts of the Moon as the Moon moves in its orbit. This is called the
phase of the Moon.
When the Moon is between Earth and the Sun, the side facing away from Earth
is light up and the side we see is dark. This is called a new moon because
people in many cultures used it to mark the beginning of a new month. When it is
behind the Earth, the side we see is light up. This is called a full moon.

Page 29
When the Moon is halfway
between new moon and full
moon, we see one quarter of
the Moon. This phase is
called the first quarter. When
the Moon is halfway between
full moon and new moon, we
see a quarter of the Moon
again, but the opposite
quarter from what we see at
first quarter. This phase is
called the third quarter
because the Moon had gone
three quarters the way
around its orbit from the new
moon position.
When the Moon is between either one of the quarter phases and new moon, it is
in a crescent phase. It is shaped like a banana or a cow's horns. When the Moon
is between either one of the quarter phases and full moon, it is in a gibbous
phase. The unlit part as seen from Earth is crescent shaped.
The cycle of phases does not match the Moon's 27.3 Earth day orbit. This is
because the Moon makes one orbit in 27.3 days if you use the faraway stars to
keep track of the Moon's position. The Earth is moving in its orbit around the
Sun. While the Moon makes its orbit, the Earth moves ahead of it. The Moon
needs extra time to catch up with the Earth and complete the cycle of phases.
The complete cycle of phases takes 29.5 days. This is why we use 30 days, not
27 days, as the average length of the month.
An interesting thing happens sometimes when the moon is a crescent phase.
The Earth can reflect enough sunlight to the Moon to make the noramlly unlit
part be dimly light. This is called earthshine. If that dim lighting cannot be seen, it
could be viewed by letting a camera collect enough light to make the dim part
look brighter in the picture.

Page 30
This diagram is not drawn to scale. Really the Sun us much much bigger than shown here and also much
much further away. But it should give you an idea of how solar eclipses occur. Imagine a person standing
on the yellow spot. Their view of the sun is completely blocked by the moon and so they experience a total
eclipse. A person standing in the purple region will have part of their view of the sun blocked by the
moon. They will see a partial eclipse.

What are eclipses?

Why can we see the full moon if it is behind the Earth as seen from the Sun?
Why can we get sunlight at new moon if it is between the Sun and the Earth?
The Moon doesn't always get blocked out by Earth's shadow at full moon and it
doesn't always block the Sun at new moon because the orbit of the Moon is
tilted. This tilt usually makes the Moon be above or below the Sun at new moon
or the Earth's shadow at full moon.
But sometimes when things are lined up right, eclipses
happen. There are two main kinds of eclipses. When
the Moon does block the Sun, it is called a solar
eclipse. They can be viewed with special filters to keep
people from hurting their eyes. Unfortunately, when a
solar eclipse occurs, only a few people can view a total
eclipse, as the part of the Earth that is dark from the
eclipse is only in a small area of the world. Solar Eclipse - November 3rd,
1994 - High Altitude
One of the unique things about the Earth's Moon is that Observatory
the apparent size (how big you see something when
you look up into the sky) of both the Moon and the Sun are almost identical. This
results in some very spectacular views when this occurs, especially when you
are in the part of the world where the eclipse is total. In addition to seeing
eruptions of gases from the sun called prominences, you can also see the
corona of the sun. This is a region of very hot gasses that are escaping from the
sun and form the solar wind. This particularly interesting because normally the
photosphere of the Sun keeps you from being able to see the corona, and
many astronomers try to do scientific measurements of the corona during an
eclipse.
When the Moon does go through the Earth's shadow, it is called a lunar eclipse

Page 31
 and it can be viewed with the eyes. Because the Earth
is so much larger than the Moon, a lunar eclipse can
usually be viewed by just about half of the people on
the Earth when they occur, and happen about twice a
year. Before and after the moon enters the shadow of
the Earth, it turns to a reddish color. This is due to the
fact that the blue colors of sunlight are scattered in the
atmosphere and the red light is able to go through
much more air. This is exactly the same as what you
see during a sunset or sunrise, except on the moon
Lunar Eclipse - September 11th, this is light that is going through the Earth's
2003
atmosphere.
Other planets with moons can have eclipses too. Shadows of moons have been
seen on the surface of other planets, and those moons go into the shadow of
those planets as well. When a planet goes between us and the Sun, it is called a
transit. These usually are not noticed by anybody due to sunlight dimming
(unlike an eclipse of the Moon), but can be seen with telescopes that have
special filters to keep the sunlight from hurting your eyes.

How does the Moon cause tides?

The ocean tides are caused
by gravity. The closer you are
to the Moon, the stronger the
pull of gravity. The ocean
facing the Moon is closer
than the middle of the Earth.
It is pulled more strongly by When you bring along a moon.
gravity. The ocean is pulled The gravity of the moon gets
into a bulge called a tide. weaker and weaker as you go
further from it. This causes the
The places where the ocean ocean to bulge.
bulges is a high tide. In
In this diagram the Earth has
an exagerated, deep ocean between is the low tide.
covering the whole of the The other side of the world feels the weakest pull from
surface
the Moon. Here the Earth is pulled more strongly than
the ocean. The Earth moves away from the water. This makes the ocean bulge
out on this side as well. In between these two bulges, the oceans of the world
are lower.
Both the Moon and the Sun cause tides, but the moon's is much stronger. This is
because the Moon is much closer to the Earth, so it's gravity changes more
quickly from strong to weak on the opposite sides of the Earth. The Sun, being
much further away, has a less variable gravity strength. As the Earth turns, the
tides always point toward the Moon and Sun.

Page 32
The biggest tides happen when the Earth, Moon, and Sun line up. These are
called spring tides. They occur at the new moon and the full moon. In between
the tides are lower. The weakest tides are called neap tides. Here the pulls of
the Moon and the Sun cancel each other out.

A spring tide (Note the Sun, Earth and moon

are not to scale)

A neap tide. The Moon still tries to pull the

ocean but the sun also causes a weak tide of
it's own. This partially cancels out the moons
effors and so weakens the tide

What is it made of?

The silicate crust is about 60 km thick on the near side and 100 km thick on the
far side. It is thinner under the maria and thicker under the highlands. It is
thought that the near side has more maria than the far side because the thinner
crust made it easier for lava to flood craters. There is a silicate mantle and a
small core 600 to 850 km across.
No one knows exactly how the Moon
was made, although scientists have
several theories. Some scientists think
that the Moon was made very early in
the life of Earth (when the earth was
about 50 million years old). A planet
about as big as Mars hit the young
Earth. The collision had so much
energy that the Mars-sized planet
was completly destroyed. Also much
of the earth's crust and mantle was
vaporised. Some of the debris formed
a ring around the earth and eventually
was pulled together by gravity to form the moon. The rest of the colliding planet
and young Earth merged to became the modern Earth.
All this happend billions of years ago. The idea was suggested by things like the
small size of the Moon's core and comparisons of what the Moon and Earth are
made.

Page 33
How much would the Moon's gravity pull on me?
If you were on the Moon, it would pull you down with a force about one sixth as
strong as the force of Earth's gravity. This allowed the people who visited the
Moon to lift rocks that they could not lift as easily if they were on Earth.

Who is it named after?

Moon and Month both come from the same old Greek word
Mene for the moon. Monday follows Sunday as the Moon follows
the Sun. Interestingly the Latin name Lunar is used in many
languages so Lundi is french for Monday.
Other names had been used for the Moon such as Selene and
Luna. Selene is the Greek goddess of the Moon. Luna is the
Roman name of the same Goddess. Diana is also usually
The goddess Diane, associated with the moon.
also known as the
moon goddess in
Roman Mythology

Page 34
 Mars
Mars Facts:
• Mars is red
because of rust.
• A volcano on
Mars called
Olympus Mons is the highest
mountain in our solar system.
• Mars has polar ice caps just
like Earth.
• Mars has ancient river beds
where scientists think liquid
water flowed millions or
billions of years ago.
Valles Marineris on Mars
Mars is the fourth planet from the sun. It is a terrestrial planet, because it is
very similar to the Earth in terms of atmosphere and surface features.

How big is the planet?

Mars is 6,804.9 km or 0.533 Earths in diameter.
That makes it a little more than half of Earth's
dameter, so its volume is around 15% that of the
Earth.

Comparison of the size of Mars and

the Earth

What is its surface like?

Panorama from the Mars Rover "Spirit"

The surface of Mars is dry and dusty. The highlands of the southern
hemisphere have more craters than the lower areas in the northern hemisphere.
One of the craters is the huge Hellas Planitia. It is 2100 km across.

Page 35
There is an area called the Tharsis Bulge
that has four huge volcanos. These volcanos
have not erupted for millions of years. The
largest one is Olympus Mons. It is 27 km tall,
making it the highest mountain in the solar
system and much higher than Mount Everest
on Earth. It is 540 km across, making it too
big to see the whole thing from the surface of
Mars.
Mars has a huge canyon called Valles
Marineris that is much bigger than the Grand
Canyon on Earth. It is 4000 km long, up to 7
km deep and up to 200 km wide. It it thought Olympus Mons
that Valles Marineris was made when the
surface cracked when the Tharsis Bulge formed.
There are also two ice caps at the poles. They are made of carbon dioxide and
water ices. The northern one is large and the southern one is small.
In some places, there are channels that look like they were made by water
erosion. Mars may have once been a wet planet like Earth.
If you got in a spaceship and landed on the surface of Mars, you would notice
that there is air and an atmosphere, but it is very thin. When you are standing at
the bottom of Valles Marineris, there is almost the same air pressure as you
would find on the top of the tallest mountain on Earth, Mount Everest. Even then,
you would not want to breathe it because it has very little oxygen, and much
more carbon dioxide than on the Earth. Carbon dioxide is the gas that you send
out from your lungs when you are breathing. Even with these problems,
someday people will travel to Mars and walk on its surface.

Is there life on Mars?

This is a question that many scientists have been asking for a very long time.
When telescopes were first became powerful enough to study Mars in detail, the
Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli spotted lines on the surface of Mars that
he believed to be like rivers. Unfortunately this word in Italian, when translated
into English was also the same word for canals, and that sparked the
imaginations of many people to believe that there was not only living things on
Mars, but an advanced civilization of people that built cities and structures that
could be seen on the Earth, like the Great Wall of China is visible from space as
the sign advanced tool making.
Popular fiction took advantage of this interest, and the notion of Martians
invading the Earth is a common idea in stories like this. Perhaps the most
famous story using this idea is the novel "The War of the Worlds", by H.G. Wells,
which includes some scientific opinions of what astronomers thought might be on

Page 36
Mars when that book was written. This story has since been made into a movie
on several occasions, theatrical stage productions, and even radio dramas.
Most astronomers and space scientists no longer believe that there is an
advanced civilization on Mars. The question is now if anything, even small plants
and animals ever lived on Mars in the past or are still living there. This question
is still unanswered, but there have been some attempts to find out.

In 1976, robot spacecraft from Earth called Viking

landers went to Mars to find out. When it landed, the
pictures of Mars that came back to Earth made Mars
look very much like a desert, with very little water.
Some experiements that were done to Martian soil
seemed to indicate there was no life on Mars, although
one experiment did indicate that there might be
something alive in the soil. Even that experiment,
however, was not convincing.
Model of Viking Lander
Shortly after the Viking space missions, a rock was
discovered in Antarctica that was believed to have come from Mars. When
scientists examined the inside of that rock, they discovered that there might be
an ancient fossil of some bacteria.
Another robotic spacecraft called Mars Observer has been orbiting Mars for
several years now, and it has taken photos of riverbeds and other features on
the surface that suggest that Mars had liquid water flowing on the surface. If this
is true, it seems likely that at least some very simple form of life may have lived
on Mars as well.
In spite of all the scientific research to search for life on Mars, the question still
hasn't been completely answered, and this is something that is debated by
scientists even today.

What are its moons like?

It is believed that these moons did not originally orbit Mars, but were instead a
part of the Asteroid belt. When these pieces of the Solar System came close to
Mars, they were captured by the gravity of Mars and went into relatively stable
orbits around Mars. Like the Earth's moon, these moons are in a tidal lock,
always keeping the same face towards Mars while they are in orbit.

Page 37
 Mars has two natural satellites:

Phobos

In Roman mythology both Phobos and Deimos were

the sons of the Roman god Mars. Phobos means
"fear" or "fright". Phobos also orbits closer to Mars
than any other moon to any other major planet in
the solar system. In a few million years Phobos will
eventually crash into the surface of Mars due to
orbital decay, where it goes closer to the surface of
Mars every year.

Deimos

Deimos means "panic" or "dread" as the son of

Mars. Deimos is one of the smallest moons of any
The Moons of Mars planet in the Solar System (so far).

How long is a day on this planet?

One day on Mars is only a little longer than an Earth day at 1.025 Earth days. A
year is 1 Earth year and 322 Earth days long.

What is it made of?

It is thought that Mars has an iron and sulfur core and a mantle and crust
made of silicate.

How much would Mars's gravity pull on me?

If you were on Mars, it would pull you down with a force about two fifths as
strong as the force of Earth's gravity. This would make somebody living on the
surface of Mars to experience something significantly different. You could lift
objects that weigh almost three times as much compared to similar objects here
on the Earth. You could jump up almost three time higher, but it would take much
more time in order to fall to the ground from the same height.
Even though it appears as though you would be like a comic-book hero on Mars,
you would still have to worry about the mass of an object. A large object that is
moving forward would still crush you if you got in its way, just like it would be a
problem here on the Earth, and a bullet from a gun would do just as much
damage on Mars as it does on the Earth.

Page 38
Who is it named after?
Due to its red appearence in the sky, Mars is named after the Roman god of war.

Page 39
 Mars/Phobos
Phobos Facts:
• Phobos orbits Mars closer
than any other moon to the
planet that it orbits.
• Tidal forces make gravity
toward Phobos almost twice
as strong near the middle than
on the ends that face Mars and
are away from Mars.

Phobos as seen by the Viking-1 Orbiter

How Big is Phobos?

Phobos is actually quite tiny compared to
most other moons in the Solar System. It is
not a round sphere-like object, but irregularly
shaped, so its size is not always the same
across. At the largest extreme, it is 26 km
across, and the smallest is about 18 km Phobos in orbit above Mars, as captured by
across. Basically about the size of a large the Viking-2 orbiter, above the Martian
city here on the Earth. volcano Ascraeus Mons

What is Its Surface Like?

From the basic appearance, it is very much like it would
look on the Earth's Moon, except that the surface features
are exaggerated. Just like the Earth's Moon, Phobos has
no atmosphere. Also like the Earth's moon to the Earth,
Phobos has one face that constantly points the same
direction toward Mars, and is called tidally locked.
One big difference you would notice is that there is almost
no gravity at all on Phobos. Just by jumping with your own
legs, you would be able to put yourself into "orbit" and "fly"
A photo closeup of Phobos around Phobos. The gravity is only 1/1000th as strong as it
by the Viking-1 Orbiter is on the Earth. This also affects "mountains" on Phobos,
as there would appear to be huge cliff and other features

Page 40
where on even the Earth's Moon they would have collapsed due to gravity pulling
them down.
One of the most prominent features on Phobos is a giant crater named
Stickney. The impact from this crater has a significant effect on the structure of
the entire moon, and lines or "grooves" are along the surface of Phobos that
were formed as a result of this impact.
If you were standing on Phobos, Mars would be a significant feature in the sky,
taking up almost 1/4 of the sky.

How Long Is a Day on Phobos?

A day on Phobos is the same as its orbit around Mars, because it is tidally
locked. This is about 7 hours 40 minutes.

How Long Is an Orbit Around Mars?

Phobos is very close to the surface of Mars. In fact, it is closer than any other
moon in the Solar System that has been discovered so far from the surface of
the planet that it orbits.
The time it takes to go around Mars is about 7 hours and 40 minutes. This
produces a very interesting experience to somebody on Mars, where Phobos
rises from the west and sets in the east, as it travels faster than the sun on a
Martian day.

Solar Eclipse by Phobos

Just like on the Earth by the Earth's Moon, Phobos does eclipse the Sun on
Mars. This is also called a transit, and produces many of the same effects that
you see from a solar eclipse. If you were to see such an eclipse on Mars, it
would significantly darken the Sun, but it would not go into totality like the Earth's
Moon does on the Earth. Also, because the orbit of Phobos is so fast, the eclipse
would happen very quickly, in just a few seconds instead of the several minutes
you see an eclipse on the Earth.

Page 41
One other thing to keep in mind is that
because Phobos orbits Mars so
closely, an "eclipse" near the Martian
equator will be much more noticable
than an eclipse further away, because
Phobos is usually quite a bit closer to
an observer at the equator.

The future of Phobos

Because Phobos is so close to Mars,
and because of the very low gravity,
Phobos may be a place where people
and supplies are transfered before
going to the surface of Mars and then
going to the Earth, almost like a space
station in orbit around the Earth. It is Solar eclipse by Phobos on Mars
very likely that if people go to Mars as
astronauts, they will be vising Phobos as well. Phobos also has water ice that
could be useful to astronauts on Mars as drinking water and for oxygen.

Who is it Named After?

Phobos was named after the son of Mars, who in mythology was the god of
"fear" or "fright", and one of the servants of Mars.

How was it discovered?

Asaph Hall was an astronomer with the United States Naval Observatory,
where he studied many of the planets and objects in the Solar System. In 1877
he discovered both Phobos and Deimos, and identified them as moons of Mars.
The name for Phobos was suggested by Henry Madan, based on the book Iliad,
a classical Greek book about mythology.

Page 42
 Mars/Deimos
Phobos Facts:
• Deimos is one of the smallest
moons in the Solar System.

Deimos as seen by the Viking-2 Orbiter

How Big is Deimos?

Deimos is one of the smallest moons in the solar system at only 12 km in
diameter, or about 1/2 the diameter of Phobos. Surprisingly, however, Deimos
was spotted and identified as a moon before Phobos, partly because of its
greater distance from Mars. The surface area of Deimos is roughly the size of a
medium-sized city on the Earth. It is also very irregular in shape, due to is small
size.
From the viewpoint of somebody
standing on Mars, Phobos would
appear almost as just a very bright
star, and you would not be able to
identify any surface features without a
telescope.

What is Its Surface

Like?

The surface of Deimos has no

atmosphere of any kind, and it is full
of craters from meteors hitting the
surface, just like the Earth's Moon.
The surface of Deimos is made up
of black rocks called carbonaceous
chondrite, which is made up of the A view of the surface of Deimos from only 30km away

Page 43
element carbon. There is also water ice on the surface of Deimos, as well as
most of the interior.
Because Deimos is so small, one thing that you notice is that the gravity on
Deimos is almost not even there. It is about 1/2500th of the force of gravity here
on the Earth. This is so little gravity that it would be very dangerous for people to
walk on the surface without a tether or some other restraint to keep them from
pushing themselves completely away from Deimos. If there were a structure on
Deimos built for humans, it would resemble an orbital space station inside.
Because Deimos is tidally locked to Mars, it always keeps one side facing Mars
during its entire orbit. This means that if you were on the side facing Mars, you
would always see Mars in the same part of the sky all of the time. The other size
would never see Mars in the sky. On the side facing Mars, the view of Mars itself
takes up almost one eleventh of the sky, so Mars itself would be a rather
significant object to look at.
One of the reasons why scientists are interested in exploring Deimos is because
it is believed to be an asteroid that was captured by Mars many millions of years
ago. By studying Deimos and its brother moon Phobos, scientists hope to get a
very close view of what other asteroids of a very similar size also look like
elsewhere in the solar system.

How Long Is a Day on Deimos?

A "day" on Deimos last about 30.5 hours. It is tidally locked to Mars, so a day
on Deimos is precisely the same as the time it takes to orbit Mars.

How Long Is an Orbit Around Mars?

It takes about 30.5 hours for Deimos to orbit completely around Mars. This
creates a very unusual situation because it is close to the rotation period of Mars.
From the surface of Mars, Deimos still appears to rise from the east and set in
the west like the Sun, Planets, and everything else in the sky (except Phobos),
but it lingers in the sky for a very long time, taking almost 3 sols (Martian days) to
finally set in the western sky.

Page 44
Solar Eclipse by Deimos
Just like how the Earth's Moon can come between the
Earth and the Sun, Deimos occasionally comes between
Mars and the Sun. This is also called a transit, and in this
case perhaps transit is a more appropriate term than
eclipse.
Because Deimos is so tiny and relatively far away from Eclipse of the Sun by
Mars as well, the portion of the Sun that is covered by Deimos as seen by the
Deimos during an eclipse is very small, and from the Mars Rover Opportunity
perspective of somebody standing on the ground on Mars
would hardly even be noticed.

Who is it Named After?

Deimos is named after the Greek son of Ares (the Greek name for Mars), who is
also called "panic" or even "dread". Deimos, together with Phobos and others,
would in mythology often accompany Ares into battle with gods.

How was it discovered?

Asaph Hall was an astronomer with the United States
Naval Observatory, where he studied many of the planets
and objects in the Solar System. In 1877 he discovered
both Phobos and Deimos, and identified them as moons of
Mars. The name for Deimos was suggested by Henry
Madan, based on the book Iliad, a classical Greek book
about mythology.

Asaph Hall, the discoverer

of Phobos

Page 45
 Asteroid belt

The asteroid belt lies between Mars and Jupiter. It

contains lumps of rock much smaller than planets.
These lumps are called asteroids or minor planets.
They are not visible from Earth with the naked eye, but
many may be seen through binoculars or small
telescopes.

How big are the asteroids?

Asteroid Ida and its moon
The largest asteroid is Ceres, which is 1032 kilometers
across. The next largest, which is called Pallas, is 588 kilometers across.
Asteroids less than a kilometer across have also been seen. Unofficially the limit
has been set at 50 meters, and anything smaller than that is going to be simply
called a meteoroid. With advances in telescopes and particularly for objects that
travel close to the Earth, some objects have been seen that are indeed smaller
than 50 meters that merely pass nearby the Earth.

How many are there?

There are probably several million asteroids in the solar system. Over 96,000
asteroids have been given numbers. Almost 12,000 of them have names. But
even though there are a lot of asteroids, the asteroid belt is mostly empty space.
Traveling through the asteroid belt in a space ship would not be very much like
what you see in a science fiction film.

Page 46
What are they named after?

The first asteroids were named after mythical heroes and gods much like the
major planets. The first to be discovered was named Ceres after the Roman
goddess of growing plants (particularly grain) and of motherly love. The second
asteroid discovered was called Pallas named after one of the Greek gods of
wisdom. Asteroids are also given a number in the order of their discovery, so
Ceres is 1, Pallas is 2, and so forth. As the number of know asteroids increased
the supply of mythical names was exhausted so a names from other sources
were used.
Some asteroids were named after countries. For example asteroid number 136
is named Austria. Others were named after plants, for example 978 Petunia.
1620 Geographos was named after the National Geographic Society, in
recognition to their efforts at sharing knowledge about the Solar System. Many
are named after people both alive and dead. In a couple of cases, like 2309 Mr.
Spock, asteroids were named after the discover's pet cat. This naming has been
discouraged, but it still happens occasionally. Even fictional characters have
been used.
Today, names for asteroids can be suggested by the people who discover them.
The names become official after a group of people reviews them to make sure
they are not offensive or too much like another name. Due to some automated
asteroid scanning observatories and a systematic exploration of the Solar
System for near Earth asteroids, almost all new asteroid discoveries are not
even getting a name at all, but rather a numerical designation, and it is not
anticipated that they will ever be given a formal name, at least in this century.

What are they made of?

Most asteroids (3 out of 4) are made of carbon-based rock. The rest are made of
the metals iron and nickel. About half of these are pure iron and nickel; the rest
are mixed with silica compounds. Each of the larger metal asteroids contains
more iron than has been mined in the entire history of human kind.
Scientists are very interested in what asteroids are made of because it can help
them learn how the solar system was formed. Several spacecraft have visited
asteroids to learn more about them.

Are there asteroids outside of the asteroid belt?

Most asteroids are found in the asteroid belt, but not all. Some asteroids orbit
closer to the Sun. Asteroids that closely approach Earth are called Near-Earth
Asteroids. Sometimes they strike the Earth, burning in the atmosphere as a
meteor. If they are large enough, they might actually hit the surface and become
meteorites.

Page 47
There are also some asteroids in the outer solar system that are called
Centaurs, although it is hard to determine whether a particular Centaur is an
asteroid, comet, or Kuiper Belt object. For example, the first Centaur to be
discovered was Chiron. But some scientists think it is a comet, not an asteroid.
Officially it is both the asteroid 2060 Chiron and the comet 95P/Chiron!
Some asteroids are also found at the stable points 60° behind and ahead of the
orbits of Jupiter and other planets. The points are called Lagrange points and the
asteroids found there are called Trojans. Many of the small moons of some
planets may have once been asteroids that were captured by the planet's gravity
when they came too close.

Page 48
 Jupiter
Jupiter Facts:
• Due to its
magnetic field
trapping particles
from the Sun,
Jupiter is surrounded by very
powerful radiation belts which
would kill anyone who
entered them.
• Jupiter's moon Europa is
thought to have a giant ocean
below its surface.
Jupiter (Note the red spot)
Jupiter is by far the largest planet within our solar system: two and a half times
larger than all of the other planets put together. It is the fifth planet from the Sun
and one of the brightest planets. Jupiter is sometimes called a "gas giant"
because most of this planet is made up of liquid and gas.
• Jupiter's magnetic field is the largest single thing in the solar system. It is
26 million kilometers across, making it about 20 times bigger than the
Sun. It has a tail that extends past Saturn's orbit. If it could be seen from
Earth, it would appear to be five times the size of the full moon.

How big is the planet?

Jupiter is 142,984 km or 11.209 Earths in diameter
at the equator. That makes it about one tenth as big
as the sun. About one thousand four hundred
Earths could fit into the volume of Jupiter. It is
133,709 km or 10.517 Earths in diameter from pole
to pole. Jupiter's rapid rotation makes it bulge out
at the equator.

What is its surface like?

Jupiter does not have a solid surface. This
Jupiter as seen by the space probe enormous planet has a relatively small solid and
"Cassini". This is the most detailed
color portrait of Jupiter ever
rocky core. Liquids and gases surround this core
assembled. and blend with the atmosphere.

Page 49
Jupiter is a cloudy, windy and stormy planet. It is always
covered by a layer of clouds, and wind speeds of 600
km/h are not uncommon. The storms are visible as swirls,
bands and spots. A particularly violent storm, about three
times Earth's diameter, is known as the Great Red Spot.
This storm has been in existance for nearly 300 years!
The layer of clouds is divided
into several bands. The
lighter colored bands are called zones and the
darker bands are called belts. The colors are
caused by small changes in the temperature and
chemistry. Each band rotates in the opposite
direction from its neighbors. Along the edges where
the bands meet, these winds collide and create
swirling patterns.
The stormy atmosphere
The Great Red Spot of Jupiter has flashes of
lightning just like on
Earth. However these can be up to 100 times more
powerful. The lightning is made by water near the
tops of the clouds.

What are its rings like?

Jupiter's rings are dark and hard to see. They are
made of tiny particles that meteors knocked off Jupiter Eclipses
Jupiter's small inner moons.

What are its moons like?

Jupiter has 63 known moons. There are four major moons that were discovered
by Galileo in 1610. Those moons are Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. They
are called the Galilean moons. There are often eclipses on Jupiter's cloud tops
by the Galilean moons.

Amalthea Group

There are four small moons orbiting inside Io's orbit. That group is called the
Amalthea group because Amalthea is the largest one. They are all small and
potato shaped. Amalthea is very red. The material of Jupiter's rings came from
meteors knocking it off of those moons.

Page 50
Io

Io is Jupiter's closest major moon. It is 3643.2 km across, slightly larger than

Earth's Moon. It has volcanos and molten sulfur lakes. There are not very many
craters if there are any at all because the volcanic activity would cover them up.
Io has an iron and maybe iron sulfide core at least 1800 km across. It is
surrounded by a silicate shell. There is little water on Io. Maybe it was because
when Jupiter was forming, it was hot enough to dry out Io, but not the other
major moons. In Roman mythology Io was a beautiful young woman that Jupiter
loved.

Europa

Europa is 3,121.6 km across, about ten percent smaller than Earth's Moon. It is
made of silicates and has a layer of smooth water ice 10 to 30 km thick. The ice
has long cracks in it and very few craters. It looks like the sea ice on Earth. The
ice had slid around at the cracks. There is liquid water under the ice up to 100
km below the surface. There are also some large spots on the surface. In
Roman mythology Europa was courted by Jupiter in the form of a bull.

Ganymede

Ganymede is 5262.4 km across, making it 380 km bigger than Mercury. It is

Jupiter's largest moon and the largest moon in the solar system. It had plate
tectonics like Earth. There are older darker regions and newer areas with
grooves where the plates moved. Newer craters have bright rays around them
from material thrown up by impacts. Older craters look flat and faded because
the icy surface does not hold the shape of the crater as well as rock does over
long periods of time. Ganymede may have an iron and sulfur core with a silicate
mantle and an icy shell. It may be like an Io with a layer of ice on it. In Roman
mythology Ganymede was a beautiful young man who Jupiter kidnapped and
made cupbearer to the gods on Mt. Olympus.

Callisto

Callisto is 4820.6 km across, about the same size as Mercury. It has many
craters. Like craters on Ganymede, the older craters had faded. The largest
crater is Valhalla. It has a bright center 600 km across with rings around it up to
3000 km across. Callisto is made of silicates and ice. There is a 200 km thick icy
crust with a liquid water sea under it. In Roman mythology Callisto was turned
into a bear by Jupiter's jealous wife Juno. Later Jupiter placed her in the stars as
The Great Bear.

Page 51
Other moons

The other moons are tiny ones in several groups outside the orbits of the major
moons, there is a small moon, Themisto and four groups of little moons that orbit
very far from Jupiter.

How long is a day on this planet?

One Jupiter day is about 10 Earth hours long.

How long is a year on this planet?

One year on Jupiter is 4,335 Earth days or 11.87 Earth years long.
A Jupiter year is about equal to four-tenths (or two-fifths) of a Saturn year. Thus
after every two Saturn years, Jupiter has completed five full orbits about the Sun.
So after 59 years, Saturn and Jupiter will be back in nearly the same position.
When the orbits of two planets are simple ratios of each other like this, it is called
a resonance.

What is it made of?

Jupiter has a rocky core. Around the
core, there is metallic hydrogen. On
top of that is liquid and then gaseous
hydrogen. There is no place where
the hydrogen suddenly turns from a
gas to a liquid.
The gaseous hydrogen is part of
Jupiter's atmosphere. Other gases
there include helium,, methane,
The interior of Jupiter contains a small rocky core,
water, and ammonia!
surrounded by hydrogen that is under such intense
pressure it forms a metal. During the transition zone
How much would the hydrogen gradually changes from metal to liquid
and finally gas.
Jupiter's gravity pull on
me?
If you were floating close to the cloud tops of Jupiter, it would pull you down with
a force about two and a half times as strong as the force of Earth's gravity.
Jupiter's rapid rotation causes the equator to bulge out. This would also cancel
out about 10 percent of gravity's force on you if you were at the equator. The
amount of this counteraction becomes lower the closer you get to the poles.

Page 52
Who is it named after?
Jupiter is named after the chief of the Roman gods, also called
Zeus in ancient Greece. It was so named because of the
planet's enormous size, which dominates all the others.

Statue of Zeus
(Jupiter) in Olympia,
Greece

Page 53
 Jupiter/Amalthea
Amalthea is the third moon of Jupiter. Amalthea Facts:
• Amalthea is the reddest object
How Big is Amalthea? in the solar system, even
redder than Mars.
Amalthea has is irregularly shaped. It has an
average diameter of 172 km.

What is Its Surface Like?

The surface of Amalthea has many craters. The largest crater, called Pan, is 100
km across and 8 km deep. Another crater, called Gaea, is 80 km across and
twice as deep as Pan.
There are two mountains on Amalthea. They are called Mons Lyctas and Mons
Ida.

How Long Is a Day on Amalthea?

One day on Amalthea is equal to 11 hours, 57 minutes, and 23 seconds

Who is it Named After?

Amalthea is named after a nymph who nursed Zeus with goat's milk.

How was it discovered?

Amalthea was discovered on September 22, 1892 by Edward Emerson Barnard,
using the 36 inch (91 cm) refractor telescope at Lick Observatory .

Page 54
 Jupiter/Io Io Facts:
• Io is the most volcanically
active body in the Solar
How Big is Io? System.

Io is 3642.6 km, or 0.28 Earths wide.

What is Its Surface Like?

Unlike most moons, Io has a "young" surface. Because there is so much volcanic
activity, the surface is almost free of craters.
In addition to volcanoes, Io also has many mountains, lakes of molten sulfur,
calderas, and flows of molten sulfur or silicate hundreds of kilometers long. The
colour of the surface is due to sulfur and its various compounds.

How Long Is a Day on Io?

Io takes about 1 and three-quarters of a day to complete one rotation.

Who is it Named After?

Io is named after one of Zeus' many lovers.

How was it discovered?

Io was discovered by both Simon Marius and Galileo Galilei. It was found on
Janurary 7, 1610.

Page 55
 Jupiter/Europa
Europa is one of the moons of Jupiter. Europa has an icy surface. Europa is
special to scientists as they beleive there is an ocean under the ice. Life may live
in the ocean.

Europa Facts:
• Europa may have an ocean
under its icy surface
• Some scientists think that
extraterrestrial life may live in
Europa's oceans

How Big is Europa?

Europa is 3,121.6km (.246 earths) across. It would take 125 Europa's to equal
the weight of one Earth, and almost 67 Europa's could be fit into the volume that
Earth occupies.

What is Its Surface Like?

The Europan surface is extremely smooth; few
features more than a few hundred meters high have
been seen. There are very few craters on Europa, and
Picture of the surface of Europa
only three are more than 5 km wide. This would seem taken by the Galilleo spacecraft
to indicate a young and active surface; based on
estimates of the frequency of cometary bombardment Europa probably endures,
the surface must be no more than 30 million years old. The smoothness and
visible markings strongly resemble that of sea ice on Earth, and it is thought that
under the surface there is a layer of liquid water kept warm by tidally generated
heat. The temperature on the surface of Europa is far below freezing, even at the
equator, so water ice is as hard as rock. The largest craters appear to be filled
with flat, fresh ice; based on this and on the calculated amount of heat generated
by Europan tides it is predicted that the outer crust of solid ice is approximately
10-30 kilometers thick, which could mean that the liquid ocean underneath may
be as deep as 90 kilometers.

Page 56
 Europa's most striking surface feature is a series of
dark streaks crisscrossing the entire globe. These
streaks strongly resemble the cracks that form in sea
ice on Earth, and close examination shows that the
edges of Europa's crust on either side of the cracks
have moved relative to each other. The larger bands
Cutaway of what we think the
are roughly 20 km across with a central band of lighter
interior of Europa could look material that is thought to have been produced by a
like series of volcanic water eruptions or geysers as the
Europan crust spread open to expose warmer layers
beneath. The effect is similar to that seen in the Earth's oceanic ridges. These
various fractures are thought to have been caused in large part by the tidal
stresses exerted by Jupiter; Europa's surface is thought to rise and fall up to 30
meters between high and low tides. Since Europa is tidally locked to Jupiter- the
same side always faces towards Jupiter - the stress patterns should form a
distinctive and predictable pattern. However, only the youngest of Europa's
fractures conform to the predicted pattern; other fractures appear to have
occurred at increasingly different orientations the older they are. This can be
explained if Europa's surface rotates slightly faster than its interior, which is
possible due to the subsurface ocean seperating the moon's surface from its
rocky mantle.
It has been suggested that life may exist in this under-ice ocean. Scientists who
suggest this point out that life can thrive in similarly harsh conditions on Earth:
around deep-ocean hydrothermal vents or in the Antarctic Lake Vostok, which is
also under a thick sheet of ice. There is currently no supporting evidence that life
exists on Europa, but efforts have nevertheless been made to avoid any
possibility of contamination. The Galileo mission was concluded by crashing the
spacecraft into Jupiter—if simply abandoned, the unsterilized craft might have
eventually crashed into Europa and contaminated it with microorganisms from
Earth. This would have made it impossible to determine if Europa ever had its
own native life, and could even destroy native organisms if they exist.

How Long Is a Day on Europa?

Europa rotates just as fast as it goes around Jupiter so that the surface of
Europa always faces the same way towards Jupiter. This means that there is no
day and night on Europa, but rather a light and dark side, just like with the Moon.

How Long Is an Orbit Around Jupiter?

Europa takes a little more than three and a half days to go around Jupiter.

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Who is it Named After?
Europa is nammed after one of Zeus' love interests.

How was it discovered?

Europa was discovered by two people: Simon Marius
and Galileo Galilei. Galileo discovered it on Janurary 7,
1610. Marius also observed it around the same time.

Europa and Zeus in the form of

a white bull

Page 58
 Saturn
Saturn Facts:
• If you could find
a bathtub big
enough, Saturn
would float in it.
• Some of Saturn's moons
control the width of its rings.
• add description.

Saturn casts a shadow on its rings

How big is the planet?

Saturn is 120,536 km or 9.449 Earths in diameter at the equator. It is only
108,728 km or 8.552 Earths in diameter from pole to pole. It is bigger at the
equator because it spins fast enough to budge out.

What is its surface like?

Saturn has no surface that you could stand on without going deep into its
atmosphere. The atmosphere has bands, but they're not as colorful as Jupiter's.

What are its rings like?

Saturn's rings are composed of silica rock, iron oxide, and ice particles ranging in
size from specks of dust to the size of a small automobile.

What are its moons like?

Saturn has at least 48 moons. The exact number of

Saturn's moons will never be known because of the
similar sizes of the moons and the chunks of ice in
Saturn's rings.

Shepherd moons

There are small potato shaped moons in or near

Saturn's rings. They control the ring particles with
Saturn with some of its moons their gravity. That is why they are called shepherd
moons. Six of them are known and there may be

Page 59
more.

Mimas

Mimas is made mostly of water ice with a little rock. It has a large crater for its
size called Herschel. It is 130 km across, making it about a third as big as
Mimas.

Enceladus

Enceladus is made of ice. It has smooth areas, cracks and some craters. The
smooth areas are younger. Craters there got erased within the past 100 million
years.

Tethys

Tethys is an icy moon that has many craters, including the huge
Odysseus. It is 400 km across, a quarter as big as Tethys. The
crater had become flattened because the icy material doesn't hold
its shape as well as rock would. There is also a large valley called
Ithaca Chasma. It is 3 to 5 km deep, 100 km wide and 2000 km
long, three fourth of the way around Tethys. There are two moons,
Telesto and Calypso, that share Tethys's orbit. Telesto is ahead of Tethys and
Calypso is behind it..

Dione

Dione is made of lots of ice and maybe some rock in the core. It has lots of
craters. The craters are flattened because the ice doesn't hold their shape as
well as rock. One side has bright white lines that are cliffs made of ice. There is
one moon, Helene, that is ahead of Dione in its orbit.

Rhea

Rhea is an icy moon similar to Dione with some rock in the core. It has many
craters on one side and the other side has some bright white icy areas.

Titan

Titan is the largest moon of Saturn and the second largest one in
the solar system. It is the only moon in the solar system that has a
thick atmosphere. The atmosphere is made of nitrogen, methane
and various organic compounds. Its surface has light and dark
areas and few craters. However, the Cassini probe discovered a
huge crater, 440 km across, with its radar. The Huygens probe

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was carried by Cassini. It got released from Cassini and landed on Titan. It sent
back pictures of Titan's surface. Titan has a gigantic atmosphere, extending
hundreds of kilometers above the surface.

Hyperion

Hyperion is made of water ice with a little rock. It is potato shaped. It wobbles
instead of rotating in the same way other moons do.

Iapetus

Iapetus it made of ice with a little rock. It has a light area,

Roncevaux Terra with craters. There is a big dark area called
Cassini Regio that covers half of Iapetus. The dark material may
be made of organic compounds. Some of it is on the bottom of
craters. Some huge craters and a ridge had been discovered in
Cassini Regio by the Cassini probe. The ridge stretches 1300 km
along the equator It is up to 20 km high, which is over 20 times higher than
Mount Everest.

Phoebe

Phoebe is made of ice and rock, but looks dark because it has a layer dark
material on the outside. It also looks rough.

Other moons

There are two groups of small outer moons. Phoebe is part of the outermost
group.

How long is a day on this planet?

One day on Saturn is about 10 hours and 40 minutes in Earth time.

How long is a year on this planet?

One year on Saturn is 29.45 or about 29 and a half Earth years long. That is
10,758 Earth days!
A Saturn year is almost exactly equal to two and half Jupiter years. Thus after
every two Saturn years, Jupiter has completed five full orbits about the Sun. So
after 59 years, Saturn and Jupiter will be back in nearly the same position. When
the orbits of two planets are simple ratios of each other, it is called a resonance.

Page 61
What is it made of?
Saturn has a rocky core. Around the core, there is liquid metallic hydrogen. On
top of that is gaseous hydrogen. There is no place where the hydrogen suddenly
turns from a gas to a liquid.
The gaseous hydrogen is part of Saturn's atmosphere. Other gases there
include helium and some other gases. There may be rain made of helium falling
through the hydrogen.

How much would Saturn's gravity pull on me?

If you were floating close to the cloud tops of Saturn, it would pull you down with
a force only a little stronger than the force of Earth's gravity. The effects of
Saturn's large radius and its mass almost cancel out, making the force only a
little bigger.
Saturn's rapid rotation causes the equator to bulge out. This would also cancel
out about 10 percent of gravity's force on you if you were at the equator. The
amount of this counteraction becomes lower the closer you get to the poles.

Who is it named after?

Saturn is named after the
Roman god of corn, nature and
agriculture.

Map of the Saturn system (NASA)

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 Saturn/Mimas
Mimas is one of the moons of Saturn.

How Big is Mimas?

Mimas is 397.2 km wide.

What is its Surface Like?

The is covered with craters, the largest being Herschel, named after William Herschel. It
spans about one-third of Minas' width. It is 5 km high, 10 km deep, and its peak is 6km
above the crater floor.
Minas also has many chasmata(chasms), which are long, narrow, steep-sided depressions
on the moon's surface.

How long is a Day on Mimas?

One day on Mimas is equal to 23 hours.

How Long is an Orbit Around Saturn?

Mimas takes 23 hours to make one orbit around Saturn. It has syncoronous rotation,
meaning that it takes the same amount of time for Minas to complete one orbit as it does
for one rotation

What is it Made of?

Mimas is made mostly of ice, with some rock.

How Much Would Minas' Gravity Pull on Me?

If you were on Minas, the gravity would be 0.008 times as much as earth's gravity.

Who is Minas Named After?

Minas is named after Minas, the son of the Greek goddess Gaia. The named was
suggested by John Herschel, William Herschel's son. Minas is also called Saturn I.

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Who Discovered Minas?
Minas was discovered in 1789 by William Herschel. It was the second moon of Saturn to
be discovered by Herschel.

Page 64
 Saturn/Enceladus
Enceladus is a moon of Saturn.

How Big is Enceladus?

Enceladus measures 498.8km across.

What is its Surface Like?

The surface of Enceladus has a great deal of variety. Some areas are old and
have lots of craters, while other areas are young and have smooth terrain. The
younger areas are believed to have cryovolcanoes.

Page 65
 Saturn/Titan
Titan is the largest moon of the planet Saturn. It was discovered in 1655 by an
astronomer from Holland named Christiaan Huygens. Titan is the only moon in
the solar system to have a thick atmosphere.

How big is Titan?

The moon Titan is 5150 km wide. It is the second largest moon in the solar
system. Only Ganymede, a moon of Jupiter, is larger. Titan is bigger than the
entire planets of Mercury or Pluto.

How much would Titan's gravity pull on me?

If you were on Titan, it would pull you down with a force about one seventh as
strong as the force of Earth's gravity.

Who is it named after?

Titan was named for a race of giants from Greek mythology.

Page 66
 Uranus
Uranus Facts:
• Uranus's rings
may look white
in pictures, but
they are actually
made of asphalt-colored
material.
• When it was first discovered
Uranus was thought to be a
star and was given the number
34 Tauri.
• Uranus is the only planet
besides Pluto in our solar
Uranus as seen from Voyager 2 system that rotates on its side.

Uranus, the seventh planet from the sun, was discovered by William Herschel on
March 13, 1781. It is a gas giant and the third largest planet in the Solar
System.

How big is the planet?

Uranus is 51,118 km or 4.007 Earths in diameter. This means that about four
Earths placed in a line side by side would be as long as Uranus is across.

What is its surface like?

Uranus has no surface that you could stand
on without going deep into the atmosphere.

What are its moons like?

Uranus has 27 discovered moons, which

places it third in the solar system for number
of moons! The five main ones are Miranda,
Ariel, Umbriel, Titania and Oberon.

Miranda Uranus's rings and moons

Miranda is the smallest and closest of Uranus's major moons. It is mainly made

Page 67
of water ice, and silicate rocks. There are also some methane related organic
compounds. Miranda also has canyons 20 km deep. Miranda was named after
a character in "The Tempest", a play by Shakespeare. A color composite picture
of Miranda was taken with by Voyager 2 on January 24, 1986, from a distance of
147,000 kilometres.

Ariel

Ariel is half water ice with the rest being silicate rocks and methane ice. Ariel
doesn't have many craters and has big canyons. Ariel was named after the
helpful sprite in "The Tempest" by Shakespeare.

Umbriel

Umbriel is made of lots of water ice and some silicate rocks and methane ice. It
is also the darkest of Uranus's major moons. Umbriel was named after a
character in the comic poem "The Rape of the Lock" by Alexander Pope.

Titania

Titania is the largest moon of Uranus. The majority of it is water ice, with quite a
lot of silicate thrown in with some methane related organic compounds. Like
Ariel, Titania also has some huge canyons. It was named after the Queen of the
Fairies in " A Midsummer's Night Dream", a play by Shakespeare.

Oberon

Oberon is the outermost of the major moons of Uranus. It is very similar to

Titania in what it is made of. It has many craters. Some of them have white rays
around them and dark crater floors. The dark material may be made of organic
compounds. It was named after the King of the Fairies in "A Midsummer's Night
Dream".

Other moons

There are 13 tiny moons known to be orbiting Uranus inside Miranda's orbit.
Nine more tiny moons are known to be in big orbits beyond Oberon's orbit.

How long is a day on this planet?

One day on Uranus is about 17 Earth hours long. Uranus spins on its side.
Maybe it was because of a big impact early in the history of the solar system.

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How long is a year on this planet?
One year on Uranus would be 30,708 days or 84 years on Earth.

What is it made of?

Unlike Jupiter and Saturn, Uranus is thought to be made mostly of rock and ices
with only 15 percent of it being hydrogen. The gases in its atmosphere are
mostly hydrogen and helium. Other gases found in smaller amounts are
ammonia, water, and methane. The methane gives Uranus its blue-green color.
Under the atmosphere, it is thought that there is an uniform mixture of rocky and
icy materials rather than a seperate rocky core.

How much would Uranus's gravity pull on me?

If you were floating close to the cloud tops of Uranus, it would pull you down with
a force about nine tenths as strong as the force of Earth's gravity. The effects of
Uranus's large radius and its mass almost cancel out, making the force only a
little bigger.
Uranus's rotation is not as rapid as that of Jupiter and Saturn. That means its
equator does not bulge out as much. So, Uranus's rotation would not cancel out
as much of its gravity's force.

Who is it named after?

Uranus was named after Ouranos, the Greek name for the sky. According to
Greek mythology, Ouranos was the husband of Gaia, Mother Earth.

Page 69
 Neptune
Neptune is very similar to Uranus, but it is slightly smaller in diameter and more
massive.
Neptune Facts:
• Wind speeds on
Neptune can
reach 450 meters
per second.
• Neptune was discovered
because its gravitational field
was affecting the orbit of
Uranus.
• Neptune is sometimes the
ninth planet from the Sun.

Neptune as seen from Voyager 2

How big is the planet?

Neptune has a diameter of 49,528 km across at the equator and 48,681 km
from pole to pole. It is almost as big as four Earths in a row. It bulges out a little
at the equator because of its rotation, but not as much as Jupiter and Saturn.

What is its surface like?

Neptune is a gas giant so it does not have a surface that you can stand on
without going deep into its atmosphere. The atmosphere looks blue-green. It
has some dark blue spots. When the Voyager probe went by Neptune in 1989,
there was a large one called the Great Dark Spot. Now it is gone and there are
new spots. There are some high white clouds too. The winds of Neptune are
very fast, blowing at up to 2000 km per hour. That is about ten times faster than
the winds of some of Earth's strongest tornadoes.

What are its rings like?

Neptune has some faint rings that are dark and hard to see. There are clumps in
some parts of the rings where the material is more dense. It could be because of
the gravity of the nearby small inner moons of Neptune.

Page 70
What are its moons like?
Neptune has 13 known moons. There could be more.

Inner moons

There are five small potato shaped moons orbiting close to Neptune.

Proteus

Proteus is a dark moon about 420 km across. It is irregularly shaped, but it is

almost big enough for its gravity to pull it into a sphere. In Roman mythology
Proteus was Neptune's herdman who could change into any shape he wanted.

Triton

Triton is the largest moon of Neptune. Scientists think that it is a lot like Pluto. It
is 2700 km across. It is made of rock and some water ice. It has a surface
temperature of −236 °C making it the coldest world visited by spacecraft. Triton
has a very thin atmosphere made up nitrogen and a little methane.
There are volcanoes that have eruptions of liquid nitrogen, dust, or methane
compounds. The eruptions happen because of the seasons. They make plumes
up to 8 km high. There are few craters because the eruptions cover them up.
There are ice caps of nitrogen and methane ice that change sizes with the
seasons. There are also ridges and valleys. They may have formed because the
changing seasons caused the material to repeatly freeze and warm up.
An interesting thing about Triton's orbit is that it goes around Neptune in the
opposite direction from the direction of Neptune's rotation. Because of that,
scientists think that Triton was captured by Neptune long ago. Its orbit is also
very circular. Neptune's gravity made the orbit circular over a long time after the
capture. The tidal effects involved in that may have heated Triton and kept ices
melted for a billion years. In Roman mythology, Triton was the son of Neptune.

Nereid

Nereid is an irregularly shaped moon about 340 km across. Its orbit is very
eccentric or noncircular. It may have been captured by Neptune or moved into
the eccentric orbit by Triton's gravity when Triton got captured. In Roman
mythology nereids were sea nymphs.

Outer moons

There are five other known moons. They are small potateo-shaped moons far

Page 71
from Neptune. There could be more yet to be discovered.

How long is a day on this planet?

A day on Neptune lasts 16 hour and 7 minutes.

What is it made of?

Neptune is made of rock and metal in the core. The core is probably bigger than
Uranus's because Neptune weighs more, but is the same size. Around the core
is rock, water, ammonia and methane. The atmosphere makes up most of the
planet and is made of hydrogen and helium. Lower down in the atmosphere,
there is methane and ammonia too. The methane makes Neptune look blue-
green.

How much would I weigh on Neptune?

If you were floating close to the cloud tops of Neptune, it would pull you down
with a force only a little stronger than the force of Earth's gravity. The effects of
Neptune's larger radius and its mass almost cancel out, making the force only a
little bigger.
Neptune's rotation is not as rapid as that of Jupiter and Saturn. That means its
equator does not bulge out as much. So, Neptune's rotation would not cancel out
as much of its gravity's force.

Who is it named after?

Neptune is named after the Roman god of the seas, also known
as Poseidon in ancient Greece.

Artistic
impression of
Neptune

Page 72
 Pluto
Pluto Facts:
• Pluto is the
smallest planet
• Most often, it is
farthest away
from the sun, but sometimes
Neptune is.
Pluto and its moon Charon
• Some astronomers believe
that Pluto and its moon
Pluto, the ninth planet in the Solar System, Charon are actually a "double
was accidentally discovered by the planet", because Charon does
astronomer Clyde W. Tombaugh in Arizona not orbit around Pluto.
on February 18, 1930.

How big is the planet?

Pluto is the smallest of all of the planets in the Solar
System, weighing only
13,200,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilograms. While this
may seem large, it's only about 1/500th of the Earth's
mass. If you were to cut Pluto in half and measure the
length on the inside, you'd find that Pluto is 2390
kilometers across, and with a little math you could
figure out that its surface area is about 17,950,000
square kilometers (or 1/30th of the Earth's) and that its
volume is 7,150,000,000 (or 1/15th of the Earth's).

What is its surface like?

Pluto and Charon from the
We don't really know for sure. No spacecraft has ever Hubble Space Telescope
been there, and Pluto is so far away from Earth that
even the best telescopes can't see any detail. It is certainly very cold, about
-230°C. The surface of Pluto is covered with ice, but not the same kind of ice that
is found on Earth. The ice that covers Pluto is believed to be made mostly of
nitrogen. Pluto also has a very thin atmosphere of nitrogen and methane which
may freeze out when Pluto moves further from the Sun.
Some powerful telescopes like the Hubble Space Telescope have observed
some seasonal changes as Pluto moved closer to the Sun and then moved
further away, due to the nature of its orbit around the Sun.

Page 73
What is its moon like?
Pluto has one moon: Charon. Charon is about half the size of Pluto in length
and, much like Pluto, is believed to be covered with ice. Unlike Pluto, however,
the ice covering Charon is thought to be made of water rather than nitrogen. In
Roman mythology Charon ferried the shades of the dead across the river Lethe
to the land of the dead.

How long is a day on this planet?

One day on Pluto is about 6.387 Earth days long. Like Uranus, Pluto also spins
on its side.

How long is a year on this planet?

One year on Pluto would be about 90,613 days or 248 years on earth!

What is it made of?

It is believed that Pluto is made mostly of rock and ice, although scientists will
not be sure until more research is done on the planet. With the discovery of
Charon, a good approximation of the average density of the planet can be
determined, which can in turn suggest what Pluto is not made out of. If Pluto
were made out of heavy minerals and iron like the planet Mercury, Pluto would
have a very high density. Planets like Saturn are so thin and tenuous that their
average density is less than even water. Pluto is somewhere in between, but
more like some of the moons of the outer planets like Callisto or Triton, which
are known to have quite a bit of water ice.

How much would Pluto's gravity pull on me?

If you were on Pluto, it would pull you down with a force less than one tenth as
strong as Earth's gravity.

Who is it named after?

Pluto was named after the Roman god of the underworld.

Is Pluto really a planet?

Some scientists say that Pluto isn't really a planet. They say it is too small, and
point out that Charon (Pluto's satelite) is not much smaller than it. Some consider

Page 74
Pluto to be the largest known Kuiper belt object. Also, Pluto has a pattern of orbit
around the sun that is different from other planets, and its orbit is affected
somewhat by the gravitational pull of the nearby planet Neptune. Many Kuiper
belt objects have orbits like that.

Page 75
 Pluto/Charon
Charon is the only moon of Pluto.

How Big is Charon?

Charon measures 1.172 km across, about half the size of Pluto. Because the
size difference between Pluto and Charon is so small, they are sometimes
considered to be double planets. They are also somtimes thought of as the first
two trans-Neptunian objects.

What is its Surface Like?

The surface of Charon is covered in water ice.

How Long is a Day on Charon?

One day on Charon is equal to 6 days, 9 hours, and 18 minutes.

How Long is an Orbit Around Pluto?

Charon takes 6.387 days to orbit around Pluto, the same amount of time it takes
for Pluto to complete one rotation.

Who is it Named After?

Charon is named after Charon. In Greek mythology, Charon ferried the dead
across the river Acheron to Hades if they could pay him.

Who Discovered Charon?

Charon was discovered in 1978 by James Christy on June 22, 1978. He was
examining highly magnified images of Pluto and noticed a small bulge
sometimes appeared in the pictures. The bulge was later confirmed in older
images and was given the temporary name of S/1978 P 1.

Page 76
 Comets
Comet Facts:
• Comets are often described as
a giant "dirty snowball",
because they are mostly made
up of ice.
• Comets have two "tails", one
made up of rocks and dust, the
other made of gas.
• Comet tails always point
away from the Sun, wheither
The Hale-Bopp comet
they are approaching to or
receeding from the Sun.
What is a comet?
A comet is a large piece of rocks and ice that occasionally gets close to the Sun.
When it gets very close to the Sun, it "grows" a tail that can sometimes be seen
at night without a telescope.

What is its surface like?

The surface of a comet is mainly chunks of ice mixed
with rocks, usually about the size of a grain of sand or
even smaller. When the comet is far away from the
Sun it is cold and airless, and you would detect almost
no gravity. If you were an astronaut standing on the
surface of a comet, you could literally jump off the
comet and fly into orbit around the sun using just the
energy from your own muscles.
When a comet gets close to the Sun, however, things
become a bit different. The ice begins to thaw and
geysers form, which start to send out gasses, water
vapor, and dust. These gasses can't be held by the Halley's Comet, as seen from
gravity of the comet, so it drifts away from the comet. the Giotto spacecraft
This is what causes the tail of a comet to form.

How big is a comet?

As far as objects in our solar system are concerned, they are actually quite
small, from a few kilometers in diameter to about 100 kilometers across. The tail
of a comet, however, can be millions of kilometers long, sometimes stretching
from the orbit of Mars to the orbit of the Earth.

Page 77
Can I see a comet in the sky?
Not all comets are visible without a telescope. Comets that produce a
spectacular tail are called a "great comet" and are quite unusual. Being able to
see one of these comets only happens about once every century, which is why
seeing a comet like that is considered a once in a lifetime experience. When a
comet does come close to the Earth, it can take in a very large portion of the sky
and is different from anything else you might see in the sky.
Other comets can be seen with a telescope, and these are more common.
Sometimes a comet's orbit will change due to passing very close to some planets
like Jupiter or the Earth, and then all of the ice can "boil off" by repeatedly
coming close to the Sun. When this happens, a comet is considered to be
"dead", although it is still an interesting thing to study. Often before this happens,
a comet will break apart into hundreds of pieces or more.
When a comet breaks apart, it creates a trail of smaller rocks and pebbles in
space that drift along in approximately the same orbit that the original comet
traveled around the sun. These are the recurring meteor showers that happen
from time to time, and most major meteor showers have now been identified
either with an existing comet or the remains of a comet that was observed
eariler, usually in previous centuries. When the Earth travels through this
"swarm" of rocks left behind, you can see shooting stars or meteorites at night.

How many comets are there?

The exact number is hard to come up with, but there are thousands of comets in
our solar system. Many of these comets simply burn up by falling into the Sun, or
have orbits that cause them to leave the solar system. The spacecraft SOHO
has been used to identify almost 1000 comets in just a few years. That is
particularly significant because SOHO was not even designed to study comets,
but instead was supposed to be strictly a tool to study activity on the Sun.
Of comets that orbit the sun and come close to the Earth on a regular basis, the
number discovered so far is about 160 comets.

How is a comet named?

A comet is usually named after the astronomer who first
discovered it. When several people are involved in its discovery,
sometimes you will see multiple names on a comet, like Comet
Hale-Bopp, or Comet Shoemaker-Levy. It is generally considered
to be a great honor to have a comet named after you.
Comets that were observed in the past weren't always named like
this. Instead, they had names like "The Great September Comet Photograph of
Edmond Halley

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of 1882", where only the year that it was observed was mentioned in the name of
the comet. This changed, however, when Edmond Halley was able to determine
that comets which appeared in 1531, 1607, and 1682 were the same body and
successfully predicted its return in 1759. This has become known as Halley's
Comet.

What are some famous comets in history?

This diagram shows the orbit of Halley's comet around the sun. There are a
few things to note about it:
• It is much more elongated that a planet orbit.
• It is not in the same plane as the planets.
• It goes round it's orbit in the opposite direction. (This is called retrograde
motion)
• The tail points directly away from the sun

• Halley's Comet - Perhaps the most famous of all comets, and this was the
first comet to be identified as a recurring comet.
• Comet Encke - The second comet to be identified as a recurring comet.
• Comet Shoemaker-Levy - This was the first comet to have been observed
hitting another body in the solar system. In this case, it did a direct hit into
the planet Jupiter, perhaps the most studied astronomical event in history.

Where do comets come from?

There are many theories about how comets form, but the current theory most
widely accepted by astronomers is that they come from the Oort Cloud, a region
of the solar system that is about as far as you can travel from the Sun but still be
primarily affected by our sun and not other stars.

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Do Comets bring bad luck?
In ancient times people didn't have a very good understanding of what Comets
really were or where they came from. They were seen as very unusual objects in
the sky, and very temporary in nature as well. In some societies it was often a
sign of bad events in the future when a comet arrived, associated with the death
of a king or a significant military defeat. In other countries Comets were
considered to bring good luck, with increased fertility and more food. The ancient
Chinese astronomers seem to have done the best job of actually recording when
comets appeared in the sky, and left detailed descriptions of what they looked
like and approximately where in the sky that each comet was seen.
Even as recently as the 1910 appearance of Halley's Comet there was
widespread panic when it was discovered that the Earth might pass through the
tail of that comet. The panic was over having the gasses from the comet flood
the atmosphere of the Earth with poison. The reality was that there is so little gas
in a comet tail that there is no measurable effect in the content of the Earth's
atmosphere when an event like this occurs.
More recently popular media culture has produced news reports and motion
pictures with the sensational idea of a comet striking the Earth and causing
widespread destruction. This does have some basis of fact when historical and
geological evidence suggests that in the past comet fragments or even whole
comets may have struck the Earth. An explosion in a remote part of Siberia
(eastern Russia) occurred in 1908 with effects very similar to a nuclear explosion
in terms of damage to the environment. A substantially larger explosion called
the K/T Event is thought to have caused the extinction of the dinosaurs. More
recently astronomers were a witness to the impact of Comet Shoemaker-Levy
into the planet Jupiter. Had that comet hit the Earth instead it would have
destroyed almost all of the cities on the Earth.

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 Kuiper Belt
The Kuiper belt extends from Neptune's orbit Kuiper Belt Facts:
to three billion kilometers beyond it. It
• The Kuiper Belt is the most
contains lumps of icy material with organic
compounds. That makes them like comets. recently observed section of
These lumps are called Kuiper belt objects or the solar system.
minor planets. The Kuiper belt may have formed when the gravity of the young
Jupiter sent the Kuiper belt objects out to where they are now.

How big are the Kuiper belt objects?

Scientists consider Pluto to be one of the largest Kuiper belt objects. It is 2390
km across. The next largest known Kuiper belt objects are Orcus, which is about
1600 km (1,000 miles) across, 2003 EL61 at 70 percent the size of Pluto and
2005 FY9 at 50 to 70 percent of Pluto's size.
In 2005, scientists said that they found an object, 2003 UB313, that is bigger
than Pluto. It is somewhere between Pluto's size and 3200 km across. It is now
almost 100 times further away from the Sun than Earth is. It can come about as
close to the Sun as Pluto is. Its orbit is tilted almost 45 degress compared to
Earth's orbit. Pluto's orbit is tilted by only 17 degrees. Some people are calling it
the tenth planet. Others don't think that Pluto and 2003 UB313 should be
considered planets.
Other large Kuiper belt objects about or over 1000 km across are Pluto's moon
Charon, Quaoar, Varuna, Ixion, 1996 TL66, 2002 TX300, 2002 TC302, 2002
UX25 and 2002 AW197. Ceres, the largest asteroid, is about 950 km across.
There are many other Kuiper belt objects that are only a few kilometers or tens
of kilometer across.

How many are there?

By the year 2004 over 800 Kuiper belt objects had been found. Scientists think
that there are many more yet to be discovered, and some might be as big as
Earth (though much colder).

What are they named after?

After the first object in the belt was spotted from the Mauna Kea Observatory in
Hawaii, the belt was named after the astronomer Gerard Kuiper who in 1951
wrote that he thought it existed very long ago. Astronmomers including Frederick
Leonard, Kenneth Edgeworth, and Julio Fernandez thought that the belt still
existed; and some astronomers call it the Edgeworth-Kuiper belt.

Page 81
Orcus, Charon, and Varuna were named after gods of the underworld, and Ixion
a mythological person in the underworld. Quaoar was named after a creation
god.

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 Oort Cloud
Oort Cloud Facts:
• The Oort cloud is the farthest
from the sun that you can go
and still be in the solar
system.
• It is believed that most comets
originally were in the Oort
Cloud before "falling" into the
Sun.

A Diagram showing approximately how far away the

Oort Cloud might be in relation to the planets of the Solar
System

What is an Oort cloud?

Scientists think that there is a group of rocks and ice that forms a cloud-like
region surrounding our solar system. It is a collection of comet like objects
orbiting far away from the sun. It is named after a Dutch astronomer Jan Oort
who refined and popularized the theory.

Where is the Oort cloud?

The comets in the Oort cloud are at distances of 50 thousand to 100 thousand
times the distance between Earth and the sun. That is a thousand times further
away from the sun than Pluto is and about one fourth the distance to the nearest
star. Light would take a year to travel that far.

How did the Oort cloud start?

The Oort Cloud objects may have formed closer to the sun during the solar
system's formation. Then gas giants sent them far away with their gravity. They
were sent in all directions, making the Oort Cloud ball shaped instead of disk
shaped. The gravity of other stars made the objects' orbits more circular, making
the objects stay far away from the sun. Maybe the gravity of other stars could

Page 83
sometimes send the objects back toward the sun. We would see them as
comets.
One object discovered so far is Sedna. It is 1180 to 1800 km across. Its orbit
stretches from 76 to 928 times Earth's distance from the sun. Sedna takes about
11,250 Earth years to orbit the sun once. The last time Sedna was where it is
now in its orbit, Earth's last Ice Age was ending! Some scientists consider it an
inner Oort Cloud object. Others thinks that it should be included in the Kuiper
Belt, making the belt bigger.

Page 84
 About gravity, mass, and weight
This is a myth-busting section to help you avoid getting confused about what it
means to talk about your mass, or the more commonly used term for this,
weight, on another planet. This will explain how these words, like many others
we use, have different meanings when used in different contexts.

What are mass and gravity?

An object's mass can be thought of as the amount of material, matter or "stuff"
the object is made of. The more "stuff" an object is made of, the more mass it
has. All things with mass each have their own gravity. Gravity is the force that
pulls on anything with mass. More massive objects have more gravity. Earth has
more gravity than you do because it has much, much more mass than you do.
So, when you jump, other people can see you fall back to Earth. Earth is also
falling toward you. You have much less mass than Earth, so you do not pull
Earth up as much as it pulls you down. That is why you do not notice Earth
moving toward people who jump.
The more massive an object is, the harder it is to change its movement with
forces. More massive objects also react more to gravitional fields. The reason
why more massive objects do not fall faster than less massive objects is that the
larger gravitional pull on more massive objects is canceled out by the greater
difficultly gravity has making them fall.
A famous scientist named Galileo was the one who discovered that objects of
different masses hit the ground at the same time after they are dropped. He
used things like balls for his experiments because air would not slow them down
as much as things like feathers. In 1971 Astronaut David Scott, who went to the
Moon, dropped a feather and a hammer there at the same time. There was no
air on the Moon to slow down the feather. Both the feather and the hammer hit
the ground at the same time.

How much would I weigh on the Moon or another

planet?
If you weighed 100 pounds or 100 kilograms on Earth, your weight on Planet X
would be 100 of the same units. If you want to find out exactly how much you
would weigh on Planet X, just take your weight from Earth, or the doctor's office,
and multiply it by 1. Have you learned yet what happens when you multiply any
number times one? It just stays the same, doesn't it?

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Normal weight at the doctor's office

Weight on the Moon or other planets

Earth Moon Mercury Venus Mars Pluto
110 lb 110 lb 110 lb 110 lb 110 lb 110 lb
50 kg 50 kg 50 kg 50 kg 50 kg 50 kg
7 st 12 lb 7 st 12 lb 7 st 12 lb 7 st 12 lb 7 st 12 lb 7 st 12 lb
Note that on the gas giants such as Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune you
won't be able to find a place to set down your scale and weigh yourself on the
cloudtops.
But that's a pretty boring fact. So there must be something more to it—and there
is! Maybe you have visited a science museum where one of the exhibits showed
you that your weight would be different on some other planet.

Other meanings of weight

The word weight is something that we use with several different meanings. Most
of the time we use it to measure how much stuff we have. That is the meaning
we use when we say that a bag of sugar has a net weigh of two kilograms or of
four pounds. That is also the meaning we use when we weigh ourselves at the
doctor's office or at the gym, or when we calculate our Body Mass Index.
But we also sometimes use weight as a measure of how hard something is
pressing downward because of gravity. Gravity is what pulls us towards the
center of the Earth when we are on Earth, or, for example, towards the center of
a planet Venus if we were on Venus.

Different units of measurement

Let's use the Moon for an example here.

If you want to find out exactly how much you would weigh on the Moon for this
other meaning of weight, you need to learn and use different units from those
you are accustomed to using to measure your weight in the meaning we
normally use. You might just borrow the names of the units we normally use for
this purpose, and use the same number here on earth with a new unit that we
will call kilograms-force or pounds-force (which use the symbols kgf and lbf to
distinguish them from kg and lb for the units of mass). If we do that, then on
Earth the number of these units you weigh in this new meaning of the word
weight is the same as the number of pounds and kilograms you weigh at the
doctor's office. But if you go to a different planet or moon, then your weight in
pounds or kilograms would stay the same, but your weight in pounds-force or
kilograms-force would change. So it doesn't work so well to use the names that

Page 86
are so much alike, if you are not on Earth. In order to keep track of the
differences more easily, you can instead use a newer unit that was invented to
help keep you from getting confused about these differences.
That modern international unit used for this purpose is something called a
newton, but that does not mean that it is some "new" kind of "ton". Actually, it
was named after a man called Isaac Newton who lived in England about 300
years ago—maybe you've heard the story about the apple falling on his head,
helping him to figure out how gravity works. You probably have not learned about
this new unit yet. Even your parents might not know much about it, because it
wasn't used so much, not even by their teachers and other grownups when they
were as work, when your parents were your age. More people use these
newtons today, and you will use them more often as you get older. On Earth, if
you weigh 51 kilograms or 112 pounds, your weight in this different meaning,
measured in these new units, is 500 newtons. We only use this "weight" for
some special purposes, when we are really interested in how hard we push down
on something because gravity is pulling us.
Then your weight in newtons would be just a less on the Moon, about nine-tenths
of what it is on Earth. To find your weight in newtons as you stand on the Moon,
just take your weight from the doctor's office on Earth, and if that weight is in
kilograms, multiply it by 9. Or if that weight is in pounds, multiply it by 4. But then
you'll have to add in the weight of your spacesuit as well, because that is
pressing down on the surface just like you are.

Other factors to consider

When measuring weight in the doctor's office:

• Atmosphere
When measuring weight in newtons in a physics class:
• Atmosphere
• Rotation
• Free fall

Weight in newtons vs. weight in the doctor's office

That way you know that if somebody talks about their weight in newtons, it is a
special meaning of the word weight. You have now learned that this weight is
something different from the normal meaning we use when we go shopping, or
when we weigh ourselves to keep track of our health and fitness, or to be
grouped into different weight classes so we compete against people our own
size in many sports, such as judo, boxing, weight-lifting, and wrestling.

Page 87
 How the Solar System was born
Our solar system is a part of an entity called our universe. There were many
attempts made in the past to explain how our solar system and universe came
into existence as we observe it today. The currently accepted theory of the
universe's formation is called the Big Bang Theory.

Big Bang Theory

This theory is based around the idea that an enormous explosion occured about
13.7 billion years ago. That is about 13,700,000,000 years ago. This is three
times the age of Earth! The Big Bang was not a usual explosion in space
because space and time themselves were made in the explosion. This explosion
caused the formation of the matter and energy in the universe. At first, the
universe was very hot. The planets, stars and all other heavenly bodies formed
starting some time after the Big Bang after the universe had cooled down.
The universe had been expanding and cooling since the Big Bang. Most galaxies
are moving further away from our Milky Way galaxy. The exceptions are the few
galaxies that are close enough to the Milky Way for gravity to overcome the
universe's expansion.
Scientists can still see the faint light from when the universe was hot. Over time,
the universe's expansion stretched out the light, turning it into weak microwave
light. Scientists can detect this microwave light.

Solar System Formation

The solar system formed out of a big cloud of
gas and dust about 4.6 billion years ago.

Stars and solar systems that are very similar

to the Sun are now forming in the Eagle
Nebula (also known as M16). While this is not
a picture of our own sun, it can give you an
idea of what our solar system looked like
billions of years ago. These gas clouds that
you see in this image were formed from
earlier stars that exploded and left stuff
behind.
Small finger-like parts of these clouds,
especially at the "top" of the first column on Eagle Nebula (M16) - Birth of New Stars
the left, are the new stars that are forming. Astronomers who have been
watching these stars form have seen changes happen in just a few years, which

Page 88
is a very rapid change for the life of a star.

Page 89
 Glossary
A Glossary of words used in this book:
• Asteroid - a large rocky object that orbits a star, but is too small to be a
planet.
• Astronomer - a person who studies stars and planets.
• Atmosphere
• Basalt Lava - molten basalt, a kind of rock.
• Carbon dioxide - a gas that animals breathe out and plants take in.
• Centaur
• Channel - a groove in the surface of something.
• Comet - a small icy object orbiting a star.
• Continent - a huge landmass on a planet.
• Core - the center of a planet or star.
• Crater - a hole in a planet's surface made by a meteorite falling on it.
• Crust - the outermost layer of a planet's surface.
• Energy - what you use to do work.
• Environment - the conditions on a planet.
• Equator - an imaginary line around a planet, perpendicular to the axis of
rotation.
• Erosion
• Gas Giant - one of the four outer planets made out of giant balls of gas.
• Hemisphere - one half of a planet's surface.
• Lagrange point
• Lava - molten rock above a planet's surface.
• Mantle - a layer of molten rock below a planet's crust.
• Mass - the size of something.
• Meteor - a small or medium-size rock from space that has not entered a
planet's atmosphere yet.
• Methane - a gas that makes up most of the gas giants.
• Near Earth Asteroid
• Orbit - the path that an object takes around a larger object.

Page 90
• Orbit System - a planet and its moons rotating around a star.
• Organic Compounds - compounds (collections of atoms) containing
carbon.
• Planet - the celestial body that has a greater mass than all other objects of
the same orbit system together and that describes a well-defined, special
orbit around a star.
• Radar - radio waves used to find distances to and make maps of things.
• Rotate - to turn on an axis.
• Scarp - a type of cliff.
• Silicate
• Surface Area - the area on the outside of something.
• Tectonic Plate
• Terrestrial Planets - the four planets closest to the Sun.
• Trojan asteroid
• Star - a huge ball of gas that produces light itself.
• Volcanic - something that relates to volcanoes.
• Volume - the size of an object.

Page 91
 GNU Free Documentation License
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Copyright (C) 2000,2001,2002 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
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on explicit permission from the previous publisher that added the old one.
The author(s) and publisher(s) of the Document do not by this License give
permission to use their names for publicity for or to assert or imply endorsement
of any Modified Version.
5. COMBINING DOCUMENTS
You may combine the Document with other documents released under this
License, under the terms defined in section 4 above for modified versions,
provided that you include in the combination all of the Invariant Sections of all of
the original documents, unmodified, and list them all as Invariant Sections of
your combined work in its license notice, and that you preserve all their Warranty
Disclaimers.
The combined work need only contain one copy of this License, and multiple
identical Invariant Sections may be replaced with a single copy. If there are

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multiple Invariant Sections with the same name but different contents, make the
title of each such section unique by adding at the end of it, in parentheses, the
name of the original author or publisher of that section if known, or else a unique
number. Make the same adjustment to the section titles in the list of Invariant
Sections in the license notice of the combined work.
In the combination, you must combine any sections Entitled "History" in the
various original documents, forming one section Entitled "History"; likewise
combine any sections Entitled "Acknowledgements", and any sections Entitled
"Dedications". You must delete all sections Entitled "Endorsements."
6. COLLECTIONS OF DOCUMENTS
You may make a collection consisting of the Document and other documents
released under this License, and replace the individual copies of this License in
the various documents with a single copy that is included in the collection,
provided that you follow the rules of this License for verbatim copying of each of
the documents in all other respects.
You may extract a single document from such a collection, and distribute it
individually under this License, provided you insert a copy of this License into the
extracted document, and follow this License in all other respects regarding
verbatim copying of that document.
7. AGGREGATION WITH INDEPENDENT WORKS
A compilation of the Document or its derivatives with other separate and
independent documents or works, in or on a volume of a storage or distribution
medium, is called an "aggregate" if the copyright resulting from the compilation is
not used to limit the legal rights of the compilation's users beyond what the
individual works permit. When the Document is included in an aggregate, this
License does not apply to the other works in the aggregate which are not
themselves derivative works of the Document.
If the Cover Text requirement of section 3 is applicable to these copies of the
Document, then if the Document is less than one half of the entire aggregate, the
Document's Cover Texts may be placed on covers that bracket the Document
within the aggregate, or the electronic equivalent of covers if the Document is in
electronic form. Otherwise they must appear on printed covers that bracket the
whole aggregate.
8. TRANSLATION
Translation is considered a kind of modification, so you may distribute
translations of the Document under the terms of section 4. Replacing Invariant
Sections with translations requires special permission from their copyright
holders, but you may include translations of some or all Invariant Sections in
addition to the original versions of these Invariant Sections. You may include a
translation of this License, and all the license notices in the Document, and any
Warranty Disclaimers, provided that you also include the original English version
of this License and the original versions of those notices and disclaimers. In case

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of a disagreement between the translation and the original version of this
License or a notice or disclaimer, the original version will prevail.
If a section in the Document is Entitled "Acknowledgements", "Dedications", or
"History", the requirement (section 4) to Preserve its Title (section 1) will typically
require changing the actual title.
9. TERMINATION
You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Document except as
expressly provided for under this License. Any other attempt to copy, modify,
sublicense or distribute the Document is void, and will automatically terminate
your rights under this License. However, parties who have received copies, or
rights, from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so long
as such parties remain in full compliance.
10. FUTURE REVISIONS OF THIS LICENSE
The Free Software Foundation may publish new, revised versions of the GNU
Free Documentation License from time to time. Such new versions will be similar
in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems
or concerns. See http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/.
Each version of the License is given a distinguishing version number. If the
Document specifies that a particular numbered version of this License "or any
later version" applies to it, you have the option of following the terms and
conditions either of that specified version or of any later version that has been
published (not as a draft) by the Free Software Foundation. If the Document
does not specify a version number of this License, you may choose any version
ever published (not as a draft) by the Free Software Foundation.

How to use this License for your documents

To use this License in a document you have written, include a copy of the
License in the document and put the following copyright and license notices just
after the title page:
Copyright (c) YEAR YOUR NAME.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2
or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation;
with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover
Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU
Free Documentation License".

If you have Invariant Sections, Front-Cover Texts and Back-Cover Texts, replace
the "with...Texts." line with this:
with the Invariant Sections being LIST THEIR TITLES, with the
Front-Cover Texts being LIST, and with the Back-Cover Texts being LIST.

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If you have Invariant Sections without Cover Texts, or some other combination of
the three, merge those two alternatives to suit the situation.
If your document contains nontrivial examples of program code, we recommend
releasing these examples in parallel under your choice of free software license,
such as the GNU General Public License, to permit their use in free software.

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