The Solar System and Its

Planets
 How Did the Solar
System Form?
• Cloud of gas and dust contracts due to gravity;
conservation of angular momentum means it spins
faster and faster as it contracts.

• Spin results in a disk.

 An Inventory of the Solar System

Early astronomers knew:

Moon, stars, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, comets,
and meteors

Now known:

Solar system has 165 moons, one star, eight planets (added Uranus and
Neptune), eight asteroids and more than 100 Kuiper belt objects more than
300 km in diameter, smaller asteroids, comets, and meteoroids
 What is a planet?

The large bodies that revolve around the sun in the solar system.
• Is the smallest and innermost planet in the solar system.
• Its orbital period around the sun of 89.97 days is the shortest of
all the planets in the solar system.
• Does not have any moons and rings.
• A year takes 88 earth days
• Diameter of 4, 879 km.
• It also not a planet that would be easy to survive on but it may
not be possible.
• Lack of atmosphere
• On the top has a largest changes in temperature of in the solar
system.
• Distance from the sun 57. 91 million km
• Second planet from the sun, orbiting it every 224. 7 Earth days.
• It has the longest rotation period of any planet in the solar system and
rotates in the opposite direction to most other planets.
• It named a roman goddess of love and beauty.
• Distance from the sun 108.2 million km.
• It referred sometimes as earth’s sister planet due the similar size and
mass.
• Opaque layer of clouds
• Second brightest nighttime of the planets in the sky.
• Referred to as morning star and evening star.
• This is not a pleasant place for people to live due to surface temperatures
hot enough to melt lead.
• This planet system’s analog to hell.
• The third planet, Our home from the sun.
• Its only planet known to have an atmosphere containing free oxygen,
oceans of water on its surface and of course life.
• The only planet in the universe known as possess life. Living habitats
ranging from the bottom of the deepest ocean to a few miles into the
atmosphere.
• It’s the fifth largest planets in solar system.
• Water covers roughly 71% of Earth’s surface and most of that is in the
oceans.
• Consist of oxygen, produced by plants.
• Takes earth 23.934 hours to complete a rotation on its axis and 365.26
days to complete an orbit around the sun.
• Not a perfect circle but rather oval-shaped
• Distance from the sun 149.6 million km
• Sometimes called the red planet. Its red because of rusty iron in the ground.
• Has seasons, polar ice caps, volcanoes, canyons and weather.
• It has a very thin atmosphere made of carbon dioxide, nitrogen and argon.
• To take mars between 150 and 300 days, depending on where mars in relation to earth.
• Its cold planet, the global temperature is around 80 degrees and has much thinner
atmosphere.
• The planet doesn’t retain heat very long, causing temperatures to drop quickly.
• Daytime pinkish red, rising sun its blue, in the day the sky is yellow brown.
• Distance from the sun 227.9 million km
• Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system.
• Living on the surface of Jupiter itself would be difficult, but maybe not
impossible.
• Has an extremely powerful magnetic field like a giant magnet.
• Clouds is a huge ocean of liquid metallic hydrogen.
• In earth hydrogen is gas.
• Has no solid surface.
• Produce a storm called anticyclonic storm.
• Distance from the sun 778.5 million km
• It is the least dense planet, its specific gravity 0.7 is less than that of
water.
• Flattened ball and also thought the astronomer the rings were moons.
• It has only visited 4 times by spacecraft.
• Rings could be old or they could be young.
• Saturn and rings are the jewel of the solar system, but Isn’t likely a place
we could ever live. It rotates faster than earth so a day in Saturn is shorter
than a day on earth.
• Distance from 4.495 billion km
• Named after the Greek god of the sky. He was the father of
Saturn and the grandfather of Jupiter.
• Ice Giant, the planet is mostly swirling fluids.
• Is made up of hydrogen, helium and methane.
• Mostly a ball of hydrogen and helium.
• Distance from the sun 2.871 billion km.
• Very cold and windy
• Uranus
• Neptune, the most distant planet and the smallest of the gas giant.
• Its surface gravity is almost earth-like
• Has strongest winds in the solar system
• Coldest planet in the solar system
• Distance from the sun is 4.495 billion km.
• Reveal a blue planet, and is often dubbed an ice giant, since it possesses a
thick, slushy fluid mix of water, ammonia and methane ices under its
atmosphere.
• Has an average of temperature of 353 Fahrenheit.
• Giant planet composed mainly of elements heavier than hydrogen and
helium, such as carbon, nitrogen and sulfur.
• Pluto is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt, a ring of bodies beyond Neptune.
• Largest and second most massive .
• The atmosphere of Pluto is tenuous layer of gases. It consists mainly of
nitrogen with minor amounts of methane and carbon dioxide.
• Also known as Luna
• If you live Pluto right now, it would take about 4. hours for your messages to
reach home.
 Terrestrial and Jovian Planets

Differences among the terrestrial planets:

• All have atmospheres, but they are very different; surface conditions vary as well.
• Only Venus and Earth have thick atmospheres.
• Temperatures decrease with increasing distance from Sun, as expected, but Venus and Earth
have very different temperatures!
• Only Earth has liquid water on its surface.
• • Earth and Mars spin at about the same rate; Mercury is much slower, Venus is slow
• Only Earth and Mars have moons, only Earth has a huge moon that is a significant fraction of
it’s planet’s size.
• Only Earth and Mercury have magnetic fields.
 Jovian Planets

• are larger, further from the Sun and formed from

gases around a solid metal and hydrogen core.
They have primary atmospheres, many moons and
a faster spin. 
 Origin and Structure of the Earth

Key Characteristics of the Earth’s Structure

• There are two magnetic fields in the earth which repels solar wind and protects the earth from
solar radiation
• The atmosphere of the earth is stratified, which means that it is made up of mainly nitrogen
and oxygen
• The earth is made up of a variety of minerals, melts, fluids, gases, and volatiles, which were
all left behind after the solar system was created.
• The earth has layers: a crust, a mantle, and a core
• The earth can be divided into an outer lithosphere and a plastic asthenosphere.
 The Earth's Layers

The crust is the layer that you live on, and it is the most widely studied and
understood. The mantle is much hotter and has the ability to flow. The Outer and
Inner Cores are hotter still with pressures so great that you would be squeezed into a
ball smaller than a marble if you were able to go to the center of the Earth
The Crust
It is like the skin of an apple. It is very thin in comparison to the other three layers. Crust - 5 to 70 km thick.

The Mantle
It’s layer located directly below the crust. It is the largest layer of the Earth. The mantle is composed of very hot,
dense rock. The mantle is plastic and it has 2,900 km thick.

Outer Core
It is so hot that the metals in it are all in the liquid state. The outer core is composed of the melted metals nickel
and iron. It is the liquid outer core and it has 2,200 km thick.

Inner Core
It has temperatures and pressures so great that the metals are squeezed together and are not able to move
about like a liquid, but are forced to vibrate in place as a solid. The inner core is the solid core and it has Inner
Core - 1,230 to 1,530 km thick.
 The Subsystems of the Earth
The earth has subsystems that consist of the geosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and biosphere. Each of
these spheres are important for the survival of animals and plants on earth.

• The atmosphere - is the layer of air that surrounds the earth. It protects the earth from solar rays. It also
circulates the air and gases that plants and animals need to survive.
• The biosphere - is made up of living organisms, such as plants and animals. It is important to note that all
the biospheres interact with each other. For instance, plants and animals (biosphere) interact with the
atmosphere.
• The geosphere or also called the lithosphere - is made up of the physical earth, such as rocks, magma, and
soil.
•The hydrosphere - on the other hand, is made up of all the water held on earth. It includes the water
molecules in the air, icebergs and glaciers, lakes, rivers, groundwater, and oceans.
The Atmosphere

 Divided into 6 layers according to altitude:

Exosphere: (500 km above the earth), this is where the atmosphere merges with
space.
Thermosphere: (90 km above the earth), this is where
the space shuttles orbit.
Mesosphere: (50-90 km above the earth), this is where
meteors burn.
Stratosphere: (12-50 km above the earth),
this is where the air is stable and is good for
planes and jets to fly in.
Troposphere: (0-11 km above the earth),
the is the “mixing layer,” all the weather is
limited to this layer.
 Formation of the Universe and Solar System
The universe and the solar system were formed about 4.6 billion years ago.

Formation of the Sun and the Solar System

How the sun was formed:

1. There was a spinning disk in space.

2. As gas collected in the center of this spinning disk, a “protosun” was created.
3. Molecules in the protosun collided with each other, which
caused heat to form.
4. This raised temperatures to 10,000,000C.
5. The heat and violent clashes between molecules allowed the creation of nuclear reactions, which turned the protosun
into a star.
 How the planets were formed:

1. In the disk that surrounded the protosun, a process called accretion formed the planets,
comets, moons, and asteroids.

2. Small particles crashed together to form larger and larger particles, eventually reaching
the size of planetesimals, which are several kilometers big.

3. Since these planetesimals were big enough to have their own gravity, they caused even
more collisions around them.

4. Farther away from the sun, the temperature was cooler.

5. The amount of ice here allowed for larger bodies to form, which created the core of the
planets, such as Saturn and Jupiter.
Cosmology - is a branch of astronomy that involves the origin and the evolution of the universe.
According to NASA, the definition of cosmology is “the scientific study of the large scale properties of
the universe as a whole”.
- Cosmos is the other term for universe.

Theories Of the Universe

The Big Bang Theory
• Is the most accepted theory about how the universe started. According to this theory, all of the
energy and matter of the universe were compressed into a hot and dense state.

• In this theory the universe began as a very hot, small and dense super force with no stars,
atoms form of structure then about 3.8 billion years ago, space expanded very quickly, this
started the formation of atom, stars and the galaxies.
Creationist theory
• This theory states that God, the Supreme Being created the whole universe out of nothing. The
proof can be read in the holy bible stipulating that God created the heavens and the earth
including man.

Oscillating Universe theory

• Is a cosmological model that combines both the Big bang (expansion) and the Big Crunch
(collapse) as a part of a cyclical event.

Steady-State Theory
• This theory states that the universe has always been the same since the beginning and will
remain its present state until eternity. This theory is an alternative to the big bang theory of the
evolution of the universe. The difference between Big bang theory and Steady State theory is
that, in Big bang theory the density of matter decreases over time while in Steady State theory,
density of matter is constant over time.
Thank You and God Bless!!!!!