The Planets
Inner Planets Outer Planets
____________________________ ____________________________ ____________________________ ____________________________
_______________________________ _______________________________ _______________________________ _______________________________
The Inner Planets. All of these are small-ish planets which are made from rock. They are also called the ____________________________________________________.
MERCURY
_____________________________ to the Sun. One side very hot-
The other is very cold.
Takes ____________________ to orbit the sun. Very thin atmosphere.
Covered in craters.
VENUS
_______________________________- hot enough to melt lead!
Covered in very thick sulphuric acid cloud.
Orbits the sun in ____________________________________.
________________________________ on Venus is longer than its year – and it ____________________________________________________________.
EARTH
Only planet known to definitely have
___________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________.
Pleasant temperature .
Orbits Sun in ___________________________________.
Has one natural satellite: __________________________________.
Most studied planet – for obvious reasons. Few impact craters.
MARS – The Red Planet
______________________________________ from the Sun. Fairly cold, but can get up to freezing point.
____________________________________ - Phobos (Fear) and Deimos (Terror). Both are on a ______________________________________ with Mars.
May have had life at one time – certainly _________________________, rivers – possibly oceans!
____________________________________, maybe some ice. Thin carbon dioxide atmosphere.
This picture was taken by the
_________________________________ _____.
It is most likely a
________________________________ _________________________________ _____ - but its resemblance to a human head is striking!
Some people claim it looks like the ___________________ of Egypt!
THE ASTEROID BELT
Lies ______________________________________ Mars and Jupiter.
Lots of ______________________________________________________________, some are quite large.
May have been a planet that failed to _______________________________________.
Most asteroids are not solid – more like bundles of rock.
THE OUTER PLANETS
________________________________
________________________________
These planers are, with the _____________________________________________, very large balls of gas. They may have _____________________________________________, but this is unknown.
JUPITER
________________________________________ in the solar system -big enough to swallow Earth several times.
Has at ___________________________________________ - 4 can be seen easily from Earth (Ganymede, Io, Europa and Callisto).
Has a huge _______________________________ - a massive
_____________________________________________________________.
Jupiter gives out more energy than it receives.
Takes __________________________________ to orbit the Sun. JUPITERS MOONS
Ganymede is the _________________________ moon in the ____________________________-bigger than Mercury and Pluto.
Io has ________________________________ sulphur volcanoes.
Europa is covered with _________________. There may be liquid water underneath. Callisto.
Famous for its __________ - these are _________________ ____________________, but composed of lots of bits of ________________.
At least _________________________________. Biggest are Titan, Rhea, Lapetus and Dione.
Takes ___________________________ to orbit the Sun.
Would float in water, if you could make a container big enough!
TITAN - The Odd One Out
Titan is nearly as big as Ganymede, but has __________________________________________.
Unlike nearly every other moon, it has a _____________________________________________ - thicker than the Earth’s.
It is very __________________. If you lived on Titan, you would have to be careful of the methane rain (methane is a natural gas). There may even be methane oceans, with methane icebergs!
URANUS
______________________________________ from the Sun.
Spins on ________________________________ - Uranus’s north pole sometimes points directly ____________________________________________________.
Has rings but not as prominent as Saturns. 15 moons. Largest are Titania and Oberon.
Takes ______________________________ to orbit the Sun. NEPTUNE
_______________________________ from the Sun.
Takes _________________________________________ to orbit the sun.
Very similar to Uranus – slightly smaller.
TRITON – Another Strange One
Triton, like Titan, also has an atmosphere, but considerably thinner.
It is the only moon in the solar system to orbit the wrong way – the opposite way to the planets rotation.
Has evidence of volcanoes and plate tectonics. PLUTO: The weakest Link
_______________________________ from the Sun.
Discovered in the 1930’s.
Takes _________________________ to orbit the Sun.
Very little known about it.
One moon -Charon. Discovered in 1978.
Very, very, very, _______________!
Thin methane atmosphere.
Planet or asteroid? The jury is out!
PLANET X
After Pluto was found, a search started for a tenth planet.
Its existence is inferred by _________________________________________ in the orbits of the other planets and comets, but would have to be _____________________ (3 times the mass of Saturn).
A small object has been found, but it is too small to be called a planet. (only 200 km in diameter).
COMETS
_________________________________________ - made of rock and ice.
When they approach the Sun, they ________________________________ and gain long tails.
The most famous is Hailey’s Comet – seen every ________________________________. Traditionally though to be bringers of bad tidings. (Comets that appeared in 1066 and 1666). WHY DO THEY ORBIT THE SUN?
The Sun, being the ____________________________________ in the solar system, has the ___________________________________ gravitation field.
All the planets/asteroids/comets travel in _______________________________ orbits because they are all __________________________ round by the Sun’s gravity.
This is also why _________________________ orbit planets. A BIT OF HISTORY
We now know all the planets orbit the sun, but it used to be very different.
______________________________________________________ first proposed the heliocentric (sun-centred theory). This outraged the church, and their work was _______________________.
Galileo was ____________________________ for his book, Copernicus _________________ until he was nearly dead to publish his.
SO WHAT DID PEOPLE USED TO THINK?
Up to the 17th century, people believed the __________________________ was the
______________________ of the universe.
All the other members of the Solar System, including the Sun, orbited the Earth. BUT HOW DID THIS WORK?
The main problem with this theory was that the planets sometimes appear to travel ___________________________________________________. (Retrograde motion).
The ___________________________________________ view did not easily explain this. It needed to be “fiddled”!
THE EARTH AND THE MOON
The Moon is the Earths _____________________________ natural satellite.
As it orbits, it causes some interesting effects, like
__________________________________________________________________________.
The Earth and the Moon – Phases
As the moon goes around the Earth, our view of it changes, so the amount we see changes from a full moon, to a new moon:
The Earth and the Moon: Eclipses
_______________________________________: When the moon moves into the Earth’s shadow:
_______________________________________: When the Earth moves into the moon’s shadow:
PART 3: THE STUDY OF THE UNIVERSE Where Did It All Come From??
Before the Big Bang all the matter in the matter in the Universe was compressed into a tiny dot called a ___________________________________________.
Since the Big Bang – you can think of it as a ___________________________________________ - the universe has been expanding, with galaxies steadily getting further and further away from each other.
The universe contains everything you can see – and
________________________________________________________________________!
There are millions of groups of stars called ____________________________________!
Galaxies are held together by _____________________________ - all the stars in a galaxy orbit a ________________________________ - thought to be a ______________________________ in many cases.
Galaxies are fairly evenly distributed. But they are a long way away from each other – typically millions of __________________________________________ away.
One light year is 9460530000000km. This is the distance light travels in a year! Some Galaxies are….
1) ________________________________________________
2) ________________________________________________
3) ________________________________________________
4) ________________________________________________
Our galaxy is the _____________________________________________.
It is about ______________ thousand light year across. That is 851 447 700 000 000 000 km.
The stars, which are just balls of very hot ______________ which give off light, are quite ______________________ together by comparison.
Our sun is the __________________________________ of stars.
It is average mass, average temperature, average size.
