New Moon

The Moon's position in space at New Moon.@timeanddate.com

New Moon is the first primary phase and it occurs the moment when the Sun
and Moon are aligned, with the Sun and Earth on opposite sides of the Moon.
A New Moon cannot normally be seen from Earth since only the dark side of the
Moon faces our planet at this point. Sometimes, if the New Moon is close to the
Lunar nodes of its path, it can cause a Solar Eclipse.
The greatest difference between high and low tide, also known as spring tides,
takes place around New Moon and Full Moon.

Waxing Crescent Moon

The moment a thin sliver of the Moon becomes visible after New Moon is the
beginning of the first intermediate phase, the Waxing Crescent Moon.
In the past, this used to be called New Moon while the darkest phase was called
Dark Moon. This traditional definition of New Moon is still in use in some
cultures, defining the beginning of the months for instance in the Islamic
calendar.
The rest of the Moon is also sometimes faintly visible during most of this phase
because Earth also reflects sunlight onto the Moon, a phenomenon
called earthshine.

First Quarter Moon

First Quarter Moon is the second primary phase.@timeanddate.com

First Quarter Moon is the second primary Moon phase and it is defined as the
moment the Moon has reached the first quarter of its orbit around Earth, hence
the name. It is also called Half Moon as we can see exactly 50% of the Moon's
surface illuminated. Whether you see the left or right half illuminated, depends
on several factors, including your location.
The smallest difference between high and low tide, also known as neap tides,
occurs around the 2 Quarter Moons.

Waxing Gibbous Moon

The second intermediate phase, the Waxing Gibbous Moon, lasts until the next
primary phase. Waxing means that it is getting bigger. Gibbous refers to the
shape, which is larger than the semicircle shape of the Moon at First Quarter,
but smaller than a full circle.

Full Moon

Full Moon is the brightest phase.@timeanddate.com

The Full Moon appears in the night sky when the Sun and the Moon are aligned
on opposite sides of Earth.
How can Full Moon be in the daytime?
Technically, this alignment only lasts a moment. However, the Moon can appear
to be full a day before or after while more than 98% of the Moon's disc is
illuminated.
When a Full Moon occasionally passes through Earth's shadow, it will cause
a lunar eclipse.
When the Full Moon comes close to the points of its orbit that are closest or
farthest away from Earth, we call it a Supermoon or Micromoon, respectively.
What is the Moon Illusion?

Waning Gibbous Moon

The next intermediate Moon phase is the Waning Gibbous Moon. The portion of
the visible half of the Moon illuminated decreases during this period.

Third Quarter Moon

Third Quarter Moon is the last primary phase.@timeanddate.com

The Third Quarter Moon occurs the moment the opposite half of the Moon is
illuminated compared to the First Quarter Moon.

Waning Crescent Moon

The Waning Crescent Moon. The Sun illuminates less than half of the visible part
of the Moon during this Moon phase and you can sometimes see earthshine on
the rest of the Moon towards the end.
 The planets
The inner four planets closest to the sun — Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars — are
often called the "terrestrial planets" because their surfaces are rocky. Pluto also has
a rocky, albeit frozen, surface but has never been grouped with the four terrestrials.
The four large outer worlds — Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune — are sometimes
called the Jovian or "Jupiter-like" planets because of their enormous size relative to the
terrestrial planets. They're also mostly made of gases like hydrogen, helium and
ammonia rather than of rocky surfaces, although astronomers believe some or all of
them may have solid cores. Jupiter and Saturn are sometimes called the gas giants,
whereas the more distant Uranus and Neptune have been nicknamed the ice giants.
This is because Uranus and Neptune have more atmospheric water and other ice-
forming molecules, such as methane, hydrogen sulfide and phosphene, that crystallize
into clouds in the planets' frigid conditions, according to the Planetary Society. For
perspective, methane crystallizes at minus 296 Fahrenheit (minus 183 degrees
Celsius), according to the U.S. National Library of Medicine. 

Mercury

The planet Mercury, innermost world of our solar system. (Image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University
Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington)

Zipping around the sun in only 88 days, Mercury is the closest planet to the sun, and it's
also the smallest, only a little bit larger than Earth's moon. Because its so close to the
sun (about two-fifths the distance between Earth and the sun), Mercury experiences
dramatic changes in its day and night temperatures: Day temperatures can reach a
scorching 840  F (450 C), which is hot enough to melt lead. Meanwhile on the night
side, temperatures drop to minus 290 F (minus 180 C). 
Mercury has a very thin atmosphere of oxygen, sodium, hydrogen, helium and
potassium and can't break-up incoming meteors, so its surface is pockmarked with
craters, just like the moon. Over its four-year mission, NASA's MESSENGER
spacecraft revealed incredible new discoveries that challenged astronomers'
expectations. Among those findings was the discovery of water ice and frozen organic
compounds at Mercury's north pole and that volcanism played a major role in shaping
the planet's surface.
 Discovery: Known to the ancient Greeks and visible to the naked eye
 Named for the messenger of the Roman gods
 Diameter: 3,031 miles (4,878 km)
 Orbit: 88 Earth days
 Day: 58.6 Earth days
More about Mercury:
 More Mercury Facts
 Mercury Pictures
 NASA Solar System Exploration: Mercury
Venus

An image of the cloudtops of Venus as photographed by Akatsuki's ultraviolet instrument in

2019. (Image credit: Planet-C Project Team)

The second planet from the sun, Venus is Earth's twin in size. Radar images beneath its
atmosphere reveal that its surface has various mountains and volcanoes. But beyond
that, the two planets couldn't be more different. Because of its thick, toxic atmosphere
that's made of sulfuric acid clouds, Venus is an extreme example of the greenhouse
effect. It's scorching-hot, even hotter than Mercury. The average temperature on Venus'
surface is 900 F (465 C). At 92 bar, the pressure at the surface would crush and kill you.
And oddly, Venus spins slowly from east to west, the opposite direction of most of the
other planets.

The Greeks believed Venus was two different objects — one in the morning sky and
another in the evening. Because it is often brighter than any other object in the sky,
Venus has generated many UFO reports.

 Discovery: Known to the ancient Greeks and visible to the naked eye
 Named for the Roman goddess of love and beauty
 Diameter: 7,521 miles (12,104 km)
 Orbit: 225 Earth days
 Day: 241 Earth days
More about Venus:
 More Venus Facts
 Venus Pictures
 NASA Solar System Exploration: Venus
Earth

An image of the Earth taken by the Russian weather satellite Elektro-L No.1. (Image credit: NTsOMZ)

The third planet from the sun, Earth is a waterworld, with two-thirds of the planet
covered by ocean. It's the only world known to harbor life. Earth's atmosphere is rich in
nitrogen and oxygen. Earth's surface rotates about its axis at 1,532 feet per second
(467 meters per second) — slightly more than 1,000 mph (1,600 kph) — at the equator.
The planet zips around the sun at more than 18 miles per second (29 km per second).

 Name originates from "Die Erde," the German word for "the ground."
 Diameter: 7,926 miles (12,760 km)
 Orbit: 365.24 days
 Day: 23 hours, 56 minutes
 More about Earth:
 More Earth Information
 50 Amazing Facts about Earth
 Earth Pictures
 NASA Solar System Exploration: Earth
Mars

Mars, the Red Planet, as seen from the Hubble Space Telescope.  (Image credit: Space Telescope
Science Institute)

The fourth planet from the sun is Mars, and it's a cold, desert-like place covered in dust.
This dust is made of iron oxides, giving the planet its iconic red hue. Mars shares
similarities with Earth: It is rocky, has mountains, valleys and canyons, and storm
systems ranging from localized tornado-like dust devils to planet-engulfing dust storms. 

Substantial scientific evidence suggests that Mars at one point billions of years ago was
a much warmer, wetter world. Rivers and maybe even oceans existed.
Although Mars' atmosphere is too thin for liquid water to exist on the surface for any
length of time, remnants of that wetter Mars still exist today. Sheets of water ice the size
of California lie beneath Mars' surface, and at both poles are ice caps made in part of
frozen water. In July 2018, scientists revealed that they had found evidence of a liquid
lake beneath the surface of the southern pole's ice cap. It's the first example of a
persistent body of water on the Red Planet. 
Scientists also think ancient Mars would have had the conditions to support life like
bacteria and other microbes. Hope that signs of this past life — and the possibility of
even current lifeforms — may exist on the Red Planet has driven numerous space
exploration missions and Mars is now one of the most explored planets in the solar
system.

 Discovery: Known to the ancient Greeks and visible to the naked eye
 Named for the Roman god of war
 Diameter: 4,217 miles (6,787 km)
 Orbit: 687 Earth days
 Day: Just more than one Earth day (24 hours, 37 minutes)
More about Mars:
 More Mars Facts
 Mars Pictures
 NASA Solar System Exploration: Mars
Jupiter

A close-up of Jupiter's Great Red Spot as seen by a Voyager spacecraft. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-
Caltech)
 The fifth planet from the sun, Jupiter is a giant gas world that is the most massive planet
in our solar system — more than twice as massive as all the other planets
combined, according to NASA. Its swirling clouds are colorful due to different types of
trace gases. And a major feature in its swirling clouds is the Great Red Spot, a giant
storm more than 10,000 miles wide. It has raged at more than 400 mph for the last 150
years, at least. Jupiter has a strong magnetic field, and with 75 moons, it looks a bit like
a miniature solar system.
 Discovery: Known to the ancient Greeks and visible to the naked eye
 Named for the ruler of the Roman gods
 Diameter: 86,881 miles (139,822 km)
 Orbit: 11.9 Earth years
 Day: 9.8 Earth hours
More about Jupiter:
 More Jupiter Facts
 Jupiter Pictures
 NASA Solar System Exploration: Jupiter
Saturn

The shadow of Saturn's moon Mimas dips onto the planet's rings and straddles the Cassini Division in
this natural color image taken as Saturn approached its August 2009 equinox. (Image credit:
NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute)

The sixth planet from the sun, Saturn is known most for its rings. When
polymath Galileo Galilei first studied Saturn in the early 1600s, he thought it was an
object with three parts: a planet and two large moons on either side. Not knowing he
was seeing a planet with rings, the stumped astronomer entered a small drawing — a
symbol with one large circle and two smaller ones — in his notebook, as a noun in a
sentence describing his discovery. More than 40 years later, Christiaan
Huygens proposed that they were rings. The rings are made of ice and rock and
scientists are not yet sure how they formed. The gaseous planet is mostly hydrogen and
helium and has numerous moons.
 Discovery: Known to the ancient Greeks and visible to the naked eye
 Named for Roman god of agriculture
 Diameter: 74,900 miles (120,500 km)
 Orbit: 29.5 Earth years
 Day: About 10.5 Earth hours
More about Saturn: 
 More Saturn Facts
 Saturn Pictures
 NASA Solar System Exploration: Saturn
Uranus
 This near-infrared view of Uranus reveals its otherwise faint ring system, highlighting the extent to
which the planet is tilted. (Image credit: Lawrence Sromovsky, (Univ. Wisconsin-Madison), Keck
Observatory)

The seventh planet from the sun, Uranus is an oddball. It has clouds made of hydrogen
sulfide, the same chemical that makes rotten eggs smell so foul. It rotates from east to
west like Venus. But unlike Venus or any other planet, its equator is nearly at right
angles to its orbit — it basically orbits on its side. Astronomers believe an object twice
the size of Earth collided with Uranus roughly 4 billion years ago, causing Uranus to tilt.
That tilt causes extreme seasons that last 20-plus years, and the sun beats down on
one pole or the other for 84 Earth-years at a time. 

The collision is also thought to have knocked rock and ice into Uranus' orbit. These later
became some of the planet's 27 moons. Methane in the atmosphere gives Uranus its
blue-green tint. It also has 13 sets of faint rings.
 Discovery: 1781 by William Herschel (was originally thought to be a star)
 Named for the personification of heaven in ancient myth
 Diameter: 31,763 miles (51,120 km)
 Orbit: 84 Earth years
 Day: 18 Earth hours
More about Uranus: 
 Uranus Facts
 Uranus Pictures
 NASA Solar System Exploration: Uranus
Neptune

Neptune's winds travel at more than 1,500 mph, and are the fastest planetary winds in the solar
system. (Image credit: NASA/JPL)

The eighth planet from the sun, Neptune is about the size of Uranus and is known for
supersonic strong winds. Neptune is far out and cold. The planet is more than 30 times
as far from the sun as Earth. Neptune was the first planet predicted to exist by using
math, before it was visually detected. Irregularities in the orbit of Uranus led French
astronomer Alexis Bouvard to suggest some other planet might be exerting a
gravitational tug. German astronomer Johann Galle used calculations to help find
Neptune in a telescope. Neptune is about 17 times as massive as Earth and has a
rocky core.

 Discovery: 1846
 Named for the Roman god of water
 Diameter: 30,775 miles (49,530 km)
 Orbit: 165 Earth years
 Day: 19 Earth hours
More about Neptune: 
 Neptune Facts
 Neptune Pictures
 NASA Solar System Exploration: Neptune
 Pluto (dwarf planet)

New Horizons' photo of Pluto showing the heart-shaped area now named 'Tombaugh Regio'.  (Image
credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI)

Once the ninth planet from the sun, Pluto is unlike other planets in many respects. It is
smaller than Earth's moon; its orbit is highly elliptical, falling inside Neptune's orbit at
some points and far beyond it at others; and Pluto's orbit doesn't fall on the same plane
as all the other planets —  instead, it orbits 17.1 degrees above or below. 

From 1979 until early 1999, Pluto had actually been the eighth planet from the sun.
Then, on Feb. 11, 1999, it crossed Neptune's path and once again became the solar
system's most distant planet — until it was redefined as a dwarf planet. It's a cold, rocky
world with a tenuous atmosphere. Scientists thought it might be nothing more than a
hunk of rock on the outskirts of the solar system. But when NASA's New Horizons
mission performed history's first flyby of the Pluto system on July 14, 2015, it
transformed scientists' view of Pluto. Pluto is a very active ice world that's covered in
glaciers, mountains of ice water, icy dunes and possibly even cryovolcanoes that erupt
icy lava made of water, methane or ammonia. 

Related: New Horizons' Pluto Flyby: Latest News, Images and Video

 Discovery: 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh
 Named for the Roman god of the underworld, Hades
 Diameter: 1,430 miles (2,301 km)
 Orbit: 248 Earth years
 Day: 6.4 Earth day
More about Pluto:
 Pluto Facts
 Pluto Pictures
 NASA Solar System Exploration: Dwarf Planets
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Planet Nine

The orbits of distant Kuiper Belt objects and the hypothesized Planet Nine around the sun are shown in
this image.. Orbits  in purple are primarily controlled by Planet Nine's gravity and exhibit tight orbital
clustering. Green orbits are strongly coupled to Neptune and exhibit a broader orbital dispersion.
 Planet Nine is an approximately 5-Earth-mass planet that resides on a mildly eccentric orbit with a
period of about 10,000 years. (Image credit: James Tuttle Keane/Caltech)

In 2016, researchers proposed the possible existence of a ninth planet, for now dubbed
"Planet Nine" or Planet X. The planet is estimated to be about 10 times the mass of
Earth and to orbit the sun between 300 and 1,000 times farther than the orbit of the
Earth. 
Scientists have not actually seen Planet Nine. They inferred its existence by its
gravitational effects on other objects in the Kuiper Belt, a region at the fringe of the solar
system that is home to icy rocks left over from the birth of the solar system. Also called
trans-Neptunian objects, these Kuiper Belt objects have highly elliptical or oval orbits
that align in the same direction. 
Scientists Mike Brown and Konstantin Batygin at the California Institute of Technology
in Pasadena described the evidence for Planet Nine in a study published in
the Astronomical Journal. The research is based on mathematical models and
computer simulations using observations of six other smaller Kuiper Belt Objects with
orbits that aligned in a similar matter.
A recent hypothesis proposed September 2019 on the pre-print server arXiv suggests
Planet Nine might not be a planet at all. Instead, Jaku Scholtz of Durham University and
James Unwin of the University of Illinois at Chicago speculate it could be a
primordial black hole that formed soon after the Big Bang and that our solar system
later captured, according to Newsweek. Unlike black holes that form from the collapse
of giant stars, primordial black holes are thought to have formed from gravitational
perturbations less than a second after the Big Bang, and this one would be so small (5
centimeters in diameter) that it would be challenging to detect.
Additional resources:
 Learn more about Planet X from NASA.
 Read more about recent discoveries about the planets and their moons at the
European Space Agency.
 See spectacular images of Mercury from NASA and Johns Hopkins University
Applied Physics Lab's MESSENGER mission, which ended April 2015, of Jupiter
from NASA's Juno mission and of Saturn from NASA's Cassini-Huygens mission,
which ended September 2017.

Group 2
 Choose 9 students to “be a planet”. One student is the sun. Give each of the 8 other students
of piece of cardboard with the name of a planet on it. The students need to arrange themselves
in a line in the right order. Then they physically (move) orbit around the sun.
 They will record in their NB, by drawing pictures of the planets, their names and
arrangement.

 After 12 minutes, groups swap.

 If students don't finish drawing when time’s up, they can continue in the second activity:
both group activities have the same aim