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The Family of the Sun, Its planets number eight, Plus other rocky, icy worlds That we appreciate. Mercury is hot and Mercury is small. Mercury has no atmosphere; It's just a rocky ball. The Family of the Sun, Its planets number eight, Plus other rocky, icy worlds That we appreciate. Venus has thick clouds That hide what is below. The air is foul, the ground is hot. It rotates very "slow." We love the Earth, our home, Its oceans and its trees. We eat its food. We breathe its air, So no pollution, please.
Mars is very red. It's also dry and cold. Some day you might visit Mars If you are really bold. Great Jupiter is big. We've studied it a lot. We found that is has many moons and a big red spot. Saturn has great rings. We wondered what they were, Now we know they're rocks and ice which we saw as a blur. With atmospheres that swirl & wispy white clouds too Uranus and Neptune are so cold that you'd turn blue. Pluto's small and cold It has an icy face. We call it a dwarf planet now, But it's still quite a place.
From our small world we have gazed upon the cosmic ocean for untold thousands of years. Ancient astronomers observed points of light that appeared to move among the stars. They called these objects planets, meaning wanderers, and named them after Roman deities --Jupiter, king of the gods; Mars, the god of war; Mercury, messenger of the gods; Venus, the god of love and beauty, and Saturn, father of Jupiter and god of agriculture. The stargazers also observed comets with sparkling tails, and meteors or shooting stars apparently falling from the sky. Science flourished during the European Renaissance. Fundamental physical laws governing planetary motion were discovered, and the orbits of the planets around the Sun were calculated. In the 17th century, astronomers pointed a new device called the telescope at the heavens and made startling discoveries. But the years since 1959 have amounted to a golden age of solar system exploration. Advancements in rocketry after World War II enabled our machines to break the grip of Earth's gravity and travel to the Moon and to other planets. The United States has sent automated spacecraft, then human-crewed expeditions, to explore the Moon. Our automated machines have orbited and landed on Venus and Mars, explored the Sun's environment, observed comets, and asteroids, and made close-range surveys while flying past Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. These travelers brought a quantum leap in our knowledge and understanding of the solar system. Through the electronic sight and other "senses" of our automated spacecraft, color and complexion have been given to worlds that for centuries appeared to Earth-bound eyes as fuzzy disks or indistinct points of light. And dozens of previously unknown objects have been discovered. Future historians will likely view these pioneering flights through the solar system as some of the most remarkable achievements of the 20th century.
PLANETS
Introduction
Sun
Mercury
Venus
Earth
Mars
Jupiter
Saturn
Uranus
Neptune
Pluto
Asteroids
Comets
Meteorites
History
CHARACTERISTIC
The Sun is by far the largest object in the solar system. It contains more than 99.8% of the total mass of the Solar System (Jupiter contains most of the rest). It is often said that the Sun is an "ordinary" star. That's true in the sense that there are many others similar to it. But there are many more smaller stars than larger ones; the Sun is in the top 10% by mass. The median size of stars in our galaxy is probably less than half the mass of the Sun. The Sun is personified in many mythologies: the Greeks called it Helios and the Romans called it Sol. The Sun is, at present, about 70% hydrogen and 28% helium by mass everything else ("metals") amounts to less than 2%. This changes slowly over time as the Sun converts hydrogen to helium in its core.
Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun and the eighth largest. Mercury is slightly smaller in diameter than the moons Ganymede and Titan but more than twice as massive. Mercury is in many ways similar to the Moon: its surface is heavily cratered and very old; it has no plate tectonics. On the other hand, Mercury is much denser than the Moon (5.43 gm/cm3 vs 3.34). Mercury is the second densest major body in the solar system, after Earth. Actually Earth's density is due in part to gravitational compression; if not for this, Mercury would be denser than Earth. This indicates that Mercury's dense iron core is relatively larger than Earth's, probably comprising the majority of the planet. Mercury therefore has only a relatively thin silicate mantle and crust.
Venus has been known since prehistoric times. It is the brightest object in the sky except for the Sun and the Moon. Like Mercury, it was popularly thought to be two separate bodies: Eosphorus as the morning star and Hesperus as the evening star, but the Greek astronomers knew better. (Venus's apparition as the morning star is also sometimes called Lucifer.)
Earth is the only planet whose English name does not derive from Greek/Roman mythology. The name derives from Old English and Germanic. There are, of course, hundreds of other names for the planet in other languages. In Roman Mythology, the goddess of the Earth was Tellus - the fertile soil (Greek: Gaia, terra mater - Mother Earth). Earth, of course, can be studied without the aid of spacecraft. Nevertheless it was not until the twentieth century that we had maps of the entire planet. Pictures of the planet taken from space are of considerable importance; for example, they are an enormous help in weather prediction and especially in tracking and predicting hurricanes. And they are extraordinarily beautiful.
Mars (Greek: Ares) is the god of War. The planet probably got this name due to its red color; Mars is sometimes referred to as the Red Planet. (An interesting side note: the Roman god Mars was a god of agriculture before becoming associated with the Greek Ares; those in favor of colonizing and terraforming Mars may prefer this symbolism.) The name of the month March derives from Mars. Mars has been known since prehistoric times. Of course, it has been extensively studied with ground-based observatories. But even very large telescopes find Mars a difficult target, it's just too small. It is still a favorite of science fiction writers as the most favorable place in the Solar System (other than Earth!) for human habitation. But the famous "canals" "seen" by Lowell and others were, unfortunately, just as imaginary as Barsoomian princesses.
CURRENT AFFAIRS
Researchers Discovered Water on the Oldest Rocks of Moon
Researchers in the third week of February 2013 detected water traces inside the crystalline structure of one of the oldest lunar rocks which were obtained through Apollo missions on Moon. As per the study conducted by University of Michigan, the lunar highlands represent original crust which is actually crystallised from Magma Ocean that was found mainly on the molten early Moon. Researchers made use of the Infrared spectroscopy for analysing water content in a part of plagioclase feldspar from lunar anorthosites. Plagioclase feldspar from lunar anorthosites are basically the lunar rocks which are formed of over 90 percent plagioclase. It is believed that these bright-coloured highlands rocks formed early in the history of the moon when plagioclase crystallised from the magma ocean and came up to the surface. The infrared spectroscopy work found out about the presence of 6 parts per million of water in lunar anorthosites. The water content that was measured is not actually liquid water but hydroxyl groups which were distributed in mineral grain. These hydroxyl groups that were detected are evident that the interior of the Moon contained water during the early molten state of it. Later the crust was solidified and played a crucial role in lunar basalts developments. Because there are some oldest rocks from the Moon, therefore it is believed that been there in the Moon when it was formed. Earlier theories revealed that Moon the Mars-sized body bumped into the young Earth. Eventually the debris broke into new body. It was believed that a lot of water would have been evaporated in Moon arid. water would have was formed when off and combined the space, leaving
These stars represented the first-known hypervelocity stars that have mass just like that of Earths Sun. The discovery is said to be very important because it would reveal how stars were formed in the dust-cloaked core of Milky Way.
The core of Milky Way is actually cloaked in dust which makes all stars unclear from telescopes of the astronomers, except the brightest stars. But these hypervelocity stars were useful in providing a peep into how star formation took place in the depths of Milky Way.
This is so because it is believed that the hypervelocity stars form when the black holes in the centre of Milky Way consume one star in binary system and ejects other (its twin), throwing it through the space at extremely high speed.
The astronomers explained that these stars were highly fast-moving objects which were gravitationally unbound to Earths galaxy. Even though these stars were in proximity to black holes, but they were not cloaked by dust and so they could be identified using telescopes easily. Identifying these stars could help in revealing the kind of star formation that took place in galactic centre. Astronomers at University of Hawaii in their study made use of the data from Palomar 5-metre telescope in California. In their study they discovered 130 stars in Milky Way which were traveling at a fast pace. Then the astronomers narrowed down the group of stars which were traveling at extremely fast speed with ejection from centre of Milky Way galaxy. Six of the stars met this criterion.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
APRECIATION
ALL PRAISE FOR GOD THE ALMIGHTY, WITH HIS BLESSINGS, THE SCIENCE SCRAPT BOOK IS READY. I wish to acknowledge with gratitude my parents, my teacher, my brother and my friends .
2013
SPACE
CONTENTS 1. BIOGRAPHY
BIOGRAPHY
NAME : CLASS :
OBJECTIVE :
This assignment is an overview of the history, mythology, and current scientific knowledge of the planets, moons and other objects in our solar system. Each page has images and related information.