Facts About Our Solar System.

FACTS ABOUT OUR SOLAR SYSTEM.

The Solar System is a gravitationally bound planetary system of the Sun and the objects that orbit it, either straightforwardly or indirectly. Of the objects that orbit the Sun, the biggest are the eight planets, with the rest being littler objects, for example, the five dwarf planets and other asteroid bodies. Of the objects that orbit the Sun in an indirect way—the moons—two are bigger than the littlest planet, Mercury.

The Solar System formed 4.6 billion years back from the gravitational breakdown of a monster interstellar sub-atomic cloud. Most by far of the system’s mass is in the Sun, with most of the remaining mass contained in Jupiter. The four littler inward planets, Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars, are terrestrial planets, being principally made out of rocks and metal.

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The four external planets are goliath planets, being significantly more huge than the terrestrials. The two biggest, Jupiter and Saturn, are gas goliaths, being made essentially out of hydrogen and helium; the two peripheral planets, Uranus and Neptune, are ice monsters, being made for the most part out of substances with generally high melting points contrasted and hydrogen and helium, called volatiles, for example, water, alkali and methane. Every one of the eight planets have practically circular orbits that exist in an approximate level plate called the ecliptic.

Table of Contents

How the objects in the solar system interact

All objects in the Solar System orbit the Sun; that is, they move around the Sun in in a circular motion. In addition, the orbits of these objects lie generally in a similar plane, called the ecliptic plane.

The component that causes the orbit of objects in the Solar System is one of the central powers in nature: gravity. While the common inclination for objects in the Solar System is to proceed in a straight line of motion, the Sun applies a power (gravity) on each object and subsequently “twists” the straight way into a bended one.

Additionally, different objects in the Solar System are sufficiently monstrous to apply gravitational powers sufficiently noteworthy to modify the orbit of littler objects. For instance, the Earth’s gravity is sufficiently able to keep the Moon in orbit around the Earth.

The size of the solar system

In spite of the fact that most people believe the orbit of the dwarf planet Pluto is where the solar system ends, it cannot be any farther than the truth.

Video by BBC Earth Lab

Through the span of the twentieth century researchers not just conjectured that the extent of the Solar System reaches out to very nearly 2 light years – that is multiple times the distance from the Sun to the Earth – yet additionally that there are numerous objects past Pluto.

Researcher currently trust that there are two noteworthy regions past Pluto. The first is:

The Kuiper Belt, a region of space rocks like the space rock belt among Mars and Jupiter, and
The Oort Cloud, a round region that contains various comets.

The formation of the solar system

In spite of the fact that there is some discussion with regards to the Solar System’s formation, the accompanying reasoning is at present the best known explanation of how the Solar System was created.

Around 4.6 billion years ago, a huge cloud of gas and residue was disturbed by some power. (Researchers have guessed that this power was a close-by supernova.) Because of this unsettling influence and the vitality acquainted with the cloud, the cloud started to move. When the development started, the cloud began to crumple in on itself because of its own gravity. Amid the way toward falling, the cloud started to pivot and warm up.

Video by National Geographic

As the cloud kept on falling, the cloud’s temperature kept on rising and its rotation turned out to be quicker and quicker. Accordingly, the cloud in the long run started to level out into a plate shape with a large portion of the mass situated at its inside.

Sooner or later the weight and temperature turned out to be so incredible at the cloud’s inside that atomic fusion started to happen. It was then that the Sun was conceived. After the Sun was conceived, the gases and residue farther from the circle’s middle started to cool and gather into small particles.

As an ever increasing number of particles shaped they started to crash into each other and stick together, along these lines making particles as expansive as rocks and stones. Like the littler particles that impacted, the bigger particles too started to combine on impact. These bigger bodies are known as planetisimals.

In the long run, enough planetisimals consolidated to shape planetary development. Notwithstanding, in contrast to the little particles, rocks, and planetisimals, planetary development was sufficiently huge to apply critical gravitational power on encompassing objects. Henceforth, rather than irregular collisions between objects, these developing planetary bodies pulled objects in the encompassing territory to itself.

When the majority of the material in the territory of each planetary body was pulled in, the planets were conceived. All other critical material in the solar system that did not join to frame the Sun or the planets condensed to shape the moons, space rocks, or comets. After some time, the orbits of the planets and different bodies balanced out into the solar system that we know today.

The Sun

Through the span of mankind’s history the Sun has been dreaded and revered. What our predecessors knew on a basic level was that the Sun is an imperative force behind the development of the life on Earth.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjcJwOPhwJg&t=3s

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Without the energy given through daylight, vegetation can’t develop, and without vegetation creatures don’t have a wellspring of sustenance. In any case, what we know today that our predecessors did not is exactly how extensive the extent of the Sun’s impact is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVKXzDILFKU&t=66s

Video by Jose Pecina

As our logical information has expanded so too has our understanding that the Earth is simply a piece in the bigger structure we know as the Solar System. What we have additionally found is that albeit different planets and bodies in the Solar System may not have life, the Sun is similarly as influential in their celestial affairs.

What is the sun?

The Sun is what is known as a fundamental succession star; that is, a circle made essentially out of the two gases hydrogen and helium such that certain conditions are met. The principal condition is that it must have a mass falling inside a specific range. This range is commonly acknowledged to be between around 1.4 x 1029 kg and 3.0 x 1032 kg.

The second and most significant condition is that atomic fusion must be available. Atomic fusion is the procedure whereby two lighter nuclear cores join together to deliver a heavier nuclear core. With regards to stars, hydrogen is the lighter and helium the heavier.

Size of the sun

The span of the Sun contrasted with the biggest known stars (red giants) isn’t extremely huge. Notwithstanding, whenever contrasted with the most widely recognized kind of star known to mankind, the red dwarf, the Sun is significantly bigger. Along these lines, the Sun isn’t the greatest sort of star known to mankind, however it is unquestionably bigger than most.

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To the extent the Sun’s mass contrasted with different bodies found in our solar system, the Sun is effectively the most gigantic. The Sun alone contains 99.8% of the absolute mass in the Solar System.

As far as size, the Sun has a width of approximately 1.4 million kilometers (870,000 miles). To place this in context, this is just about 110 times the distance across of the Earth. This means around one million Earth’s could fit inside the Sun.

Facts about the sun

The Sun accounts for 99.86% of the mass in the solar system. It has a mass of around 330,000 times that of Earth. It is three quarters hydrogen and most of its remaining mass is helium.

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Over one million Earth’s could fit inside the Sun. If you were to fill a hollow Sun with spherical Earths, somewhere around 960,000 would fit inside. However, if you squashed those Earths to ensure there was no wasted space then you could fit 1,300,000 Earths inside the Sun. The surface area of the Sun is 11,990 times that of Earth.

One day the Sun will consume the Earth. The Sun will continue to burn for about 130 million years after it burns through all of its hydrogen, instead burning helium. During this time it will expand to such a size that it will engulf Mercury, Venus, and Earth. When it reaches this point, it will have become a red giant star.

The energy created by the Sun’s core is nuclear fusion. This huge amount of energy is produced when four hydrogen nuclei are combined into one helium nucleus.

The Sun is almost a perfect sphere. Considering the sheer size of the Sun, there is only a 10 km difference in its polar and equatorial diameters – this makes it the closest thing to a perfect sphere observed in nature.

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The Sun is travelling at 220 km per second. It is around 24,000-26,000 light-years from the galactic centre and it takes the Sun approximately 225-250 million years to complete one orbit of the centre of the Milky Way.

The Sun will eventually be about the size of Earth. Once the Sun has completed its red giant phase, it will collapse. Its huge mass will be retained, but it will have a volume similar to that of Earth. When that happens, it will be known as a white dwarf.

It takes eight minutes for light reach Earth from the Sun. The average distance from the Sun to the Earth is about 150 million km. Light travels at 300,000 km per second so dividing one by the other gives you 500 seconds – eight minutes and twenty seconds. This energy can reach Earth in mere minutes, but it takes millions of years to travel from the Sun’s core to its surface.

The Sun is halfway through its life. At 4.5 billion years old, the Sun has burned off around half of its hydrogen stores and has enough left to continue burning hydrogen for another 5 billion years. Currently the Sun is a yellow dwarf star.

The distance between Earth and Sun changes. This is because the Earth travels on a elliptical orbit path around the Sun. The distance between the two ranges from 147 to 152 million km. This distance between them is one Astronomical Unit (AU).

The Sun rotates in the opposite direction to Earth with the Sun rotating from west to east instead of east to west like Earth.
The Sun rotates more quickly at its equator than it does close to its poles. This is known as differential rotation.

The Sun has a powerful magnetic field. When magnetic energy is released by the Sun during magnetic storms, solar flares occur which we see on Earth as sunspots. Sunspots are dark areas on the Sun’s surface caused by magnetic variations. The reason they appear dark is due to their temperature being much lower than surrounding areas.

Temperatures inside the Sun can reach 15 million degrees Celsius. Energy is generated through nuclear fusion in the Sun’s core – this is when hydrogen converts to helium – and because objects generally expand, the Sun would explode like an enormous bomb if it wasn’t for it’s tremendous gravitational pull.

The Sun generates solar winds. These are ejections of plasma (extremely hot charged particles) that originate in the layer of the Sun known as the corona and they can travel through the solar system at up to 450 km per second.

The atmosphere of the Sun is composed of three layers: the photosphere, the chromosphere, and the corona.
The Sun is classified as a yellow dwarf star. It is a main sequence star with surface temperatures between 5,000 and 5,700 degrees celsius (9,000 and 10,300 degrees fahrenheit).

The Aurora Borealis and Aurora Australis are caused by the interaction of solar winds with Earth’s atmosphere.

What type of star is the sun?

In spite of the fact that we think about our Sun as a remarkable celestial body, it is, actually, one of trillions of stars known to mankind. Over this, the Sun is fairly normal to the extent stars go.

The official classification for our Sun is G V star (frequently alluded to as a Yellow Dwarf star), which implies that it is a primary grouping star whose surface temperature is somewhere in the range of 5027°C and 5727°C.

Estimates for stars like the Sun in the Milky Way cosmic system alone are as high as 7 billion. In the event that this number is right, there could be more than one trillion stars that are generally equivalent to our Sun in the universe.

Does the sun have another name?

While our Sun does not have an official scientific name like the rest of the celestial bodies do, it has another common name: Sol. This name begins from the antiquated Roman’s divine force of the Sun, Sol. This alternate name is where we get the term “solar system,” which literally means system of the Sun.

The Moon

At a separation of 384,400 km from the Earth, the Moon is our nearest celestial neighbor and just common satellite. As a result of this reality, we have had the option to observe and subsequently learn about it. Like the Earth itself, the Moon is special at times and fairly common at others.

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There is no dark side of the Moon. Both sides of the Moon see the same amount of sunlight, however because the Moon is tidally locked to Earth, only one face of the Moon is ever seen from Earth. This is because the Moon rotates around its axis in exactly the same time it takes to orbit Earth. The side we see from Earth is reflected by sunlight, while the “dark” side has only been seen by the human eye from a spacecraft and lies in darkness.

The rise of fall of tides on Earth is caused by the Moon. Two bulges exist due to the gravitational pull the Moon exerts. One is on the side facing the Moon and the other on the side facing away from it. These bulges move around the oceans as the Earth rotates which causes the high and low tides found across the globe.

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The Moon is slowly drifting away from Earth. Every year, the Moon moves roughly 3.8 cm further away from Earth. Scientific estimates suggest this will continue to happen for 50 billion years. At that point, the Moon will take 47 days to orbit the Earth, compared to the current time of 27.3 days.

You weigh much less on the Moon. A common fact about the Moon is that it has much weaker gravity than Earth. This is because its smaller mass and you would weight one sixth (about 16.5%) of your Earth weight while on the Moon.

Only 12 people have ever walked on the Moon. It started with Neil Armstrong in 1969 as part of the Apollo 11 mission and ended with Gene Cernan in 1972 on the Apollo 17 mission. A total of 12 American males have walked on the Moon. Since 1972, all lunar missions have been unmanned spacecraft.

Neil Armstrong in 1969

Video by British Pathé

The Moon will be visited by man again. NASA has plans to set up a permanent space station on the Moon, and man may walk on the Moon again sometime around 2020.

The USA considered detonating a nuclear bomb on the Moon in the 50s. A secret project during the height of the cold war – codenamed “Project A119”, also known as “A Study of Lunar Research Flights” was planned as a “show of strength” at a time when they were falling behind the USSR in the space race.

Declassified Documents: ‘Project A119’ US nuclear tests on the Moon in the 1950’s

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Video by Beyond the Forbidden TV

There is no atmosphere on the Moon. There is no protection for the surface from cosmic rays, meteorites, asteroids, comets, or solar winds. This is why the Moon has such huge temperature variations and it is covered with impact craters. The lack of atmosphere also means no sound can be heard on the Moon and the sky is always black.

The Moon has quakes. The gravitational pull of Earth causes small moonquakes several kilometers beneath the surface – causing ruptures and cracks. It is believed that, like Earth, the Moon has a molten core.

The Moon is the fifth largest natural satellite. It is much smaller than the major moons of Saturn and Jupiter at 3,475 km in diameter, but the Moon is the largest in relation to the size of the planet it orbits. Earth is about 80 times the volume of the Moon, yet they are the same age. A popular theory is that the Moon was once part of the Earth and formed from a chunk broken off by a huge object that collided with Earth while it was still young.

The “Man in the Moon” is an optical illusion seen when looking at the Moon’s surface from Earth. It is a result of the contrast between the lighter lunar highlands and darker lunar plains.

The diameter of the Moon is the same distance from New York City to Phoenix, Arizona.
There are over 500,000 craters on the Moon’s surface.

A lunar eclipse is when the Earth passes between the Sun and the Moon and a shadow is cast on the Moon.
A solar eclipse is when the Moon passes between the Sun and the Earth – causing a shadow to project onto the Earth’s surface.

The Moon is one of a kind in that it is the only spherical satellite orbiting a terrestrial planet. The reason for its shape is a result of its mass being great enough so that gravity pulls all of the Moon’s matter toward its center equally. Another particular property the Moon has lies in its size contrasted with the Earth. At 3,475 km, the Moon’s width is more than one fourth that of the Earth’s. In relation to its very own size, no other planet has a moon as expansive.

For its size, be that as it may, the Moon’s mass is somewhat low. This implies the Moon isn’t extremely thick. The explanation behind this lies in the formation of the Moon. It is trusted that an expansive body, maybe the measure of Mars, struck the Earth at a very early stage in its life. Because of this collision a lot of the youthful Earth’s external mantle and outside layer was launched out into space.

This material at that point started orbiting Earth and after some time combined because of gravitational powers, shaping what is presently Earth’s moon. Besides, since Earth’s external mantle and outside layer are fundamentally less thick than its inside clarifies why the Moon is such a great deal less thick than the Earth.

At the point when seen from Earth, the many effect holes found on the Moon’s surface are unmistakable. The purpose behind this is basic. In contrast to the Earth, the Moon isn’t geographically dynamic, thus it doesn’t have a climate nor does it have volcanic movement. Subsequently, the Moon does not experience resurfacing as does the Earth.

Some fun facts about the universe

Uranus is tilted to its side

Uranus appears to be a featureless blue ball upon first glance, but this gas giant of the outer solar system is pretty weird upon closer inspection. First, the planet rotates on its side for reasons scientists haven’t quite figured out. The most likely explanation is that it underwent some sort of one or more titanic collisions in the ancient past. In any case, the tilt makes Uranus unique among the solar system planets.

Video by Astrum

Uranus also has tenuous rings, which were confirmed when the planet passed in front of a star (from Earth’s perspective) in 1977; as the star’s light winked on and off repeatedly, astronomers realized there was more than just a planet blocking its starlight. More recently, astronomers spotted storms in Uranus’ atmosphere several years after its closest approach to the sun, when the atmosphere would have been heated the most.

Water ice is in abundance in space

Water ice was once considered a rare substance in space, but now we know we just weren’t looking for it in the right places. In fact, water ice exists all over the solar system. Ice is a common component of comets and asteroids, for example. But we know that not all ice is the same. Close-up examination of Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko by the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft, for example, revealed a different kind of water ice than what is found on Earth.

That said, we’ve spotted water ice all over the solar system. It’s in permanently shadowed craters on Mercury and the moon, although we don’t know if there’s enough to support colonies in those places.

Mars also has ice at its poles, in frost and likely below the surface dust. Even smaller bodies in the solar system have ice – Jupiter’s moon Europa, Saturn’s moon Enceladus, and the dwarf planet Ceres, among others.

There could be a ninth planet that we haven’t discovered yet

In January 2015, California Institute of Technology astronomers Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown announced – based on mathematical calculations and on simulations – that there could be a giant planet lurking far beyond Neptune. Several teams are now on the search for this theoretical “Planet Nine,” which could take decades to find (if it’s actually out there.)

This large object, if it exists, could help explain the movements of some objects in the Kuiper Belt, an icy collection of objects beyond Neptune’s orbit. Brown has already discovered several large objects in that area that in some cases rivaled or exceeded the size of Pluto. (His discoveries were one of the catalysts for changing Pluto’s status from planet to dwarf planet in 2006.)

Titan has liquid cycles but it’s not water

A weird moon in Saturn’s system is Titan, which hosts a liquid “cycle” that moves between the atmosphere and the surface. That sounds a lot like Earth, until you begin looking at its environment. It has lakes filled with methane and ethane, which could be reminiscent of the chemistry that occurred on Earth before life arose.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrKnNWWmEn8

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Titan also nitrogen-rich compounds known as tholins. This gives Titan its distinctive orange color. Titan’s atmosphere is so thick that radar is needed to penetrate a spacecraft’s view down to the surface.

The hottest planet isn’t closest to the sun.

Many people know that Mercury is the closest planet to the sun, well less than half of the Earth’s distance. It’s no mystery, therefore, why people would assume that Mercury is the hottest planet.

We know that Venus, the second planet away from the sun, is on the average 30 million miles (48 million km) farther from the sun than Mercury. The natural assumption is that, being farther away, Venus must be cooler. But assumptions can be dangerous. For practical consideration, Mercury has no atmosphere, no warming blanket to help it maintain the sun’s heat. Venus, on the other hand, is shrouded by an unexpectedly thick atmosphere, about 100 times thicker than Earth’s atmosphere. This in itself would normally serve to prevent some of the sun’s energy from escaping back into space and thus raise the overall temperature of the planet.

But in addition to the atmosphere’s thickness, it is composed almost entirely of carbon dioxide, a potent greenhouse gas. The carbon dioxide freely lets solar energy in, but is much less transparent to the longer wavelength radiation emitted by the heated surface. Thus the temperature rises to a level far above what would be expected, making it the hottest planet. In fact the average temperature on Venus is about 875 degrees Fahrenheit (468 degrees Celsius), hot enough to melt tin and lead.

The maximum temperature on Mercury, the planet closer to the sun, is about 800 degrees F (427 degrees C). In addition, the lack of atmosphere causes Mercury’s surface temperature to vary by hundreds of degrees, whereas the thick mantle of carbon dioxide keeps the surface temperature of Venus steady, hardly varying at all, anywhere on the planet or any time of day or night!