Project by: John Isaac

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The Solar System
Mercury

• Project by John Isaac
• And Jazmine Carey

Choir Academy of Harlem
Home page
Venus
Earth
Mars
Jupiter
Saturn
Uranus
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Mercury

• The planet Mercury is very difficult to study
  from the Earth because it is always so close to
  the Sun. Even at elongation, it is never more
  than 28 degrees from the Sun in our sky. It is
  the second smallest planet (it was believed to be
  the smallest until the discovery that Pluto is
  actually much smaller than originally thought),
  and also the fastest in its orbit since it is the
  innermost planet. In fact, the name Mercury
  derives from its speed in moving around its
  orbit.

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Venus
In the last 30 years we have learned a
great deal about our "sister" planet, and we now
know that almost nothing on Venus is like that on
the Earth. Much of the previous misconception can
be traced to the difficulty of observing Venus
because it is always covered with a thick cloud
layer. In the past 3 decades astronomers have
learned how to peer through that cloud layer and
unlock many of the secrets of this nearby but
previously not well known planet.
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Earth

• The Earth is certainly the most familiar planet,
  though it has only been a few hundred years since
  we fully realized it was a planet. We begin our
  study of objects in the Solar System with the
  Earth because it is interesting in its own right,
  and it provides a test of many observing
  techniques that we wish to use for other objects
  in the Solar System.

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Mars

• Mars, the "Red Planet", is named after the Roman
  god of war because it commonly appears with a
  reddish tinge when viewed in our sky. It has
  always held a fascination for those interested in
  the possibility of life on other planets. In 1895
  a professor of astronomy, Samual Leland Phelps,
  wrote in a book called World Making that with a
  new 40 inch telescope being built by the
  University of Chicago

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Jupiter

• The planet Jupiter is shown in the adjacent
  Hubble Space Telescope true-color image (Ref).
  Jupiter is by far the largest of the planets. It
  is more than twice as massive as all other
  planets combined if it had been only about 100
  times more massive at birth (not so much by
  astronomical standards) it would have become a
  star instead of a planet. Then the Solar System
  might be a double star system instead of a single
  star with a planetary system.

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Saturn

• Saturn, the second most massive planet, and the
  most distant planet known to the ancients, is one
  of the most beautiful sites in the Solar System,
  as witnessed by the adjacent image. The most
  striking feature of Saturn is the spectacular
  ring system. Although this feature is no longer
  unique, since we now know that all the Gas Giant
  planets have rings, the rings of Saturn are much
  more elaborate than those of any of the other
  planets.

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Uranus

• Uranus is largely hydrogen and helium, but (like
  Neptune) contains higher proportions of heavy
  elements than Jupiter or Saturn, and is covered
  with clouds. Our only direct spacecraft
  observation of Uranus came from Voyager 2 in
  1986.

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Neptune

• Neptune is the eighth planet from the Sun and
  the fourth largest (by diameter). Neptune is
  smaller in diameter but larger in mass than Uranus

    Neptune has been visited by only one
spacecraft, Voyager 2 on Aug 25 1989.
Neptune's composition is probably
similar to Uranus' various "ices" and
rock with about 15 hydrogen and a
little helium
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Pluto

• Pluto (planet), ninth planet from the Sun and
  outermost known member of the solar system. Pluto
  was discovered as the result of a telescopic
  search inaugurated in 1905by American astronomer
  Percival Lowell, Pluto revolves about the Sun
  once in 247.7 Earth years at an average distance
  of 5.9 billion km (3.67 billion mi) from the Sun.
  Pluto is about 2,320 km (1,440 mi) in diameter,
  about two-thirds the size of Earth's moon.