MERCURY

 Mercury has a diameter of 4,879 km, making it the smallest planet and innermost planet in the Solar System.
Its orbital period around the Sun of 87.97 days is the shortest of all the planets in the Solar System. It is named
after the Roman deity Mercury, the messenger of the gods. It is the closest planet to the sun and it has 4.879
kilometers (2.927 miles) along its equator. It is the second warmest planet, after Venus, day time : 427°C (800°F)
Night time : -173°C (-280°F) this is due to the planet having no atmosphere to help regulate the temperature.

 Mercury takes 59 earth days to make 1 rotation & it makes a complete orbit around the sun in just 88 earth
days.

 Mercury does not have any moons or rings. It has only one sunrise every 180 earth days.

 The surface of Mercury looks much like Earth's moon. It has a lot of impact craters. Mercury has almost no
atmosphere. Because it is so close to the sun, it can be very hot.

 Mercury is nick named "Swift Planet" because of it's swiftness around the Sun.

 2000-1001 BCE, Babylonians named the planet as Napu. Ancient Greeks also gave the planet 2 names: Apollo
when it was visible in the morning and Hermes at night.

 The largest crater of mercury is called the "caloris basin" which is around 960 miles in diameter. Aside from that,
mercury has water ice on its surface, it has been detected using the earth-based radar imaging & confirmed by
NASA's messenger space-craft. The scientists believe it is because of the meteorite bombardment or planetary
outgassing.

 Mercury is one of four terrestrial planets in the Solar System, and is a rocky body like Earth.

 Your weight on Mercury would be 38% of your weight on Earth.

 From the surface of Mercury, the Sun would appear more than three times as large as it does when viewed
from Earth, and the sunlight would be as much as seven times brighter.

 Mercury's thin atmosphere, or exosphere, is composed mostly of oxygen (O2), sodium (Na), hydrogen (H2),
helium (He), and potassium (K). Atoms that are blasted off the surface by the solar wind and micrometeoroid
impacts create Mercury's exosphere.

 Mercury has wrinkles. As the iron core of the planet cooled and contracted, the surface of the planet became
wrinkled. Scientist have named these wrinkles, Lobate Scarps. These Scarps can be up to a mile high and
hundreds of miles long.

 Mercury has a molten core. In recent years scientists from NASA have come to believe the solid iron core of
Mercury could in fact be molten. Normally the core of smaller planets cools rapidly, but after extensive research,
the results were not in line with those expected from a solid core. Scientists now believe the core to contain a
lighter element such as Sulphur, which would lower the melting temperature of the core material. It is estimated
Mercury’s core makes up 42% of its volume, while the Earth’s core makes up 17%.

VENUS

Venus is the second planet from the Sun and the third brightest object in Earth's sky after the Sun and Moon. It is
sometimes referred to as the sister planet to Earth, because their size and mass are so similar, as well as a very similar
chemical composition.
It orbits at an average distance of 108 million km from the Sun, taking almost 225 days to complete one revolution
around the Sun. One of the strange characteristics of Venus is that it’s actually rotating backwards from the rest of the
planets. It has the longest rotation period of any planet in the Solar System.

Venus is the hottest planet in the solar system. Although, Venus is not the planet closest to the sun, its dense
atmosphere traps heat in a runaway version of the greenhouse effect that warms Earth. As a result, temperatures
on Venus reach 870 degrees Fahrenheit (465 degrees Celsius), more than hot enough to melt lead.

Venus has no water on its surface, and very little water vapor in its atmosphere. Scientists think that the runaway
greenhouse effect that makes Venus so hot today boiled away its oceans long ago. Since Venus lacks a planetary
magnetic field, the Sun’s solar wind was able to blast the hydrogen atoms out of Venus’ atmosphere and into space.
Venus can never be cool again.

Venus is 4.6 billion years old, just like everything else in the Solar System.

Venus, the brightest planet in the night sky, was named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty.

Venus has no moons or rings.

Venus is made up of a central iron core and a rocky mantle, similar to the composition of Earth. Its atmosphere is
mainly made up of carbon dioxide (96%) and nitrogen (3%), with small amounts of other gases. It’s thick atmosphere
that acts like a blanket, is what keeps Venus so hot.

Most of the surface of Venus is covered by smooth volcanic plains, and its dotted with extinct volcanic peaks and impact
craters. Venus has much fewer impact craters than other planets in the Solar System, and scientists have estimated that
some event resurfaced Venus between 300-500 million years ago, wiping out all of the old impact craters and volcanoes.

THE PLANET JUPITER

• It’s massive, has a powerful magnetic field, and more moons that any planet in the Solar System.

• One of the Jovian planets that orbits far from the sun.

• This planet has no solid surface and is essentially a large ball of gas (gas giant) composed primarily of Hydrogen
and Helium.

• Jupiter is the second brightest planet next Venus.

• It was named after the king of the Roman Gods (Zeus in Greek).

• It has huge Auroras that light up Jupiter’s north and south poles.

• There has been no evidence of life in Jupiter as of yet.

• Known to be the largest planet in the Solar System and is lined as the 5th planet from the sun.

• The mass of Jupiter is 318 times as massive as the Earth.

• Jupiter is 2.5 times more massive than all of the other planets in the Solar System combined.

• Jupiter’s circumference is 439,264 km.

 • Its diameter is 11 times the size of the earth.

• The surface temperature on Jupiter is

-108oC.

• The magnetic field of Jupiter is 20,000 times stronger than the earth’s magnetic field.

• Some refer to Jupiter as the solar system’s vacuum.

Jupiter’s stripes

• The planet is covered in thick red, yellow, brown, and white clouds.

This clouds make it look like it has stripes.

• Jupiter’s stripes (bands), creates interesting patterns around the

planet’s surface.

• Jupiter’s stripes or bands are caused by differences in the

chemical composition and temperature of the atmospheric gas.

• Light-colored bands are called Zones and show region where

the gas is rising, while the dark-colored bands are called Belts

and shows where the gas is sinking.

• Its used to be thought that the only cause for these bands was

the strong atmospheric winds coupled with strong convection cells circulating material between different layers of the
atmosphere. However, it is now thought that the moons of Jupiter also play an important role in making Jupiter stripy.

The great red spot