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Our Solar

System
By Jeannie Sawyer
Fair Use Guidelines
 Certainmaterials are included
under the fair use exemption of
the U.S. Copyright Law and have
been prepared according to the
educational fair use guidelines.
Objectives
 The students will know what a solar
system is.
 The students will have an
understanding on how the Solar system
was formed.
 They will know how big the solar system
is.
 They will discover how the solar system
is arranged.
What is the Solar System?
 The solar system
consists of:
 One central star,
the Sun
 Nine Planets:
Mercury, Venus,
Earth, Mars,
Jupiter, Saturn,
Uranus, Neptune,
and Pluto
How is our solar system
set up?
 It is set up into two parts:
 The inner system, those
closest to the sun;
contain Mercury, Venus,
Earth, and Mars.
 The outer system
contains Jupiter, Saturn,
Uranus, Neptune, and
Pluto.
 The inner planets are
separated from the outer
planets by the Asteroid
belt
How did the solar
system form?
 The planets, asteroids  The sun is the
and comets in the collapsed core of an
solar system are loose interstellar gas cloud,
particles left over and the planets,
from the formation of asteroids and comets
the sun. are small lumps of
 Gas and dust in the dust which stayed in
disc spiraled gradually orbit instead of
in to the center, spiraling into the Sun.
where it accumulated  The inner planets
to form the Sun. formed first and were
 These dust particles dragged by the
stuck together to spiraling gas, which is
make clumps, then why they are closest
clumps stuck together to the sun.
to make rocks, then  The outer planets
rocks collided to make have rocky cores, but
planets. their outer layers are
What is the asteroid
belt? The asteroid belt is a

zone between the
orbits of Mars and
Jupiter.
 It is believed that the
asteroids in the
asteroid belt never
formed a planet
because of the gravity
of nearby Jupiter kept
pulling them apart.
 Today, millions of
asteroids probably
inhabit the asteroid
belt, with many more
scattered throughout
the solar system.
Where do comets come 
from?
 Comets are solar system
leftovers: they are often
described as “dirty
snowballs,” lumps of frozen
gas and dust.
 Comets are almost invisible,
except when they are near the
sun’s heat.
 Comets become visible when
ice changed into gas by the
sun’s heat.
 The gas carries dust, and this
dust forms the comet’s head
and tail.
 Meteor showers sometimes
occur when the Earth passes
through a comet’s orbit.
How big is the solar
system?
 There are no physical
boundaries in space.
 The solar system from
the Sun out to Pluto
which is the farthest
planet orbiting it, is
measured in
Clip
astronomical units of
length.
 One astronomical unit
equals the distance from
Earth to the Sun: 93
million miles.
Can you see any planets
with the “naked eye”?
 The ancient
civilizations were
able to discover
Mercury, Venus,
Mars, Jupiter, and
Saturn by unaided
eye.
 Uranus, Neptune,
and Pluto were all
discovered using a
telescope.
Can the Hubble Space Telescope
take pictures of all the planets in our
solar system?
 Mercury and Earth
are the only two
planets that the
Hubble Space
Telescope has not
observed for
astronomical
purposes.
 Mercury is too close
to the Sun, which is
too bright for the
Hubble to look at.
Can you view the solar
system?
 You don’t need your own
Voyager to see the solar
system.
 You can see much of it
from your own back
yard.
 You can look at the
stars, planets, and more
out there by eye,
binoculars, or telescope,
inexpensively
 Refer to Sky & Telescope
or another magazine for
date positions or check
several Web sites that
show planetary
positions, and the sky is
Activity: Size and
Distances of Planets
 Have the student work in pairs; talk about the
planet distances and sizes compared to a scale
model.
 The distances to the planets and the sizes of the
planets are shown on the same scale, which is 1
inch = 12,000 miles. At this scale, Jupiter is 1,111
yards from the Sun and is represented by a
soccer ball of diameter about 7.33 inches. Pluto
is 4.73 miles away, and thus cannot be shown in a
typical school yard, but its size can be
represented by a small BB. At this scale, the Sun
is represented as a 6-ft diameter medicine ball,
and the star Betelgeuse (in constellation Orion)
would be a ball about 1 mile in diameter.
 Saturn is 1.2 miles away, Uranus is 1.7 miles
away, Neptune is 4.73 miles. Bonus question-how
far is Betelgeuse?
Bibliography
 http://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/StarChild/shadow
 http://www.tcsn.net/afiner/soar.htm
 http://amazing-space.stsci.edu/trading.cgi
 http://www.nasm.edu.ceps/SIMAGES/lesson.htm
 http://www.anu.edu.au/Physics/nineplanets/see
 http://www.tcsn.net/afiner/solar.htm
 http://tes.asu.edu/EDUCATION/activities/9
3_94guide/cg93_94_solar_syst_scale.html

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