Mercury

Mercury is the planet closest to the sun at 45.9-69.7 million km (28.5-43.3 million miles). Daytime temperatures reach 425degries c and (800degries f). It has a solid iron core and little atmosphere. It is heavily cratered by meteorites: its largest crater, the Calorie basin, is 1300km (800 miles) across. It orbits the sun faster than any other planet, at 172248km/h.

Venus
Similar to the earth in size and mass, Venus has a thick, poisonous atmosphere that conceals its surface and traps heat. Temperature rise to over 480digress Celsius (900digress Fahrenheit), making it the Solar systems hottest planet. It is also the brightest as its atmosphere reflects back 70 per cent of sunlight. It rotates slowly backwards, so the sun rises in west. Its day lasts 243 earth days the solar systems longest day

Earth
The only planet in the solar system or the universe known to support life is protected from the suns radiation by an atmosphere of mainly nitrogen and oxygen. Its rocks are composed predominantly of iron, oxygen, magnesium, silicon and nickel. It is the only planet that has surface water (70 per cent), so it looks blue from space. Earths orbit takes 365.242 days, and it tilted on its axis at an angle of 23.5.

Mars
Named after the Roman god of war, mars is also known as the red planet because of the high level of red iron oxide in its soil. Its day is almost the same length as earths. Surface features include Olympus Mons, the largest volcano in the solar system, 600km (375 miles) wide and 25km (15 miles) high, and mariner valley, 13 times longer than the Grand Canyon. Mars has two tiny moons, phobos (fear) and deimos (panic).

Jupiter
Named after the roman king of the gods, Jupiter is a world of extremes. It is the largest planet in the solar system, 1300 bigger than earth all the other planets would fit into twice over. It is fastestspinning planet at 45500km/h (28000mph), and the great red spot in its atmosphere is the largest known hurricane in the solar system.

Saturn
Named after the roman god of time, it takes this gas giant 29 years to orbit the sun. Saturn is 95 times heavier than earth. Its three main rings, and four fainter rings, are made of ice particles. The outermost rings are 275000km in diameter. Saturn has 30 moons.

Uranus
Uranus was the first planet to be discovered since the classical timesby Sir William Herschel in 1781. It is named after Saturns father. Uranus rotates on its side. Summers temperature is -220digress Celsius. Uranus has 11 faint narrow rings, first noted in 1977. It has 21 moons.

Neptune
Neptune is the eighth and farthest planet from the Sun in the Solar System. Named for the Roman god of the sea, it is the fourth-largest planet by diameter and the third largest by mass. Neptune is 17 times the mass of Earth and is slightly more massive than its near-twin Uranus, which is 15 times the mass of Earth but not as dense.[12] On average, Neptune orbits the Sun at a distance of 30.1 AU, approximately 30 times the EarthSun distance. Its astronomical symbol is , a stylized version of the god Neptune's trident.

MILKY WAY
THE BRIGHEST PART OF THE MILKY WAY EXTENDS FROM SCTUM TO SCORPIO, THROUGH SAGIT TARIUS THE MILKY WAY ROTATES AROUND .AN AXIS JOINING THE GALACTIC POLES THE DIAMETER OF THE MILKY WAY COMES GALAXY ITS ABOUT 1000000 LIGHT YEARS THE SOLAR SYSTEM LIES NEAR THE EDGE OF A GALAXY CALLED THE MILKY WAY

TYPES OF GALAXIES
SPIRAL CENTRAL DISC OR HUB BARRAD SPIRAL GALAXY ARM IRREGULAR GALAXY ELLIPTICAL GALAXY- CENTRAL REGION THE LARGEST ASTEROID IN OUR SOLAR SYSTEM IS CERES WHICH IS OVER 1000KM WIDE THW LAST TIME THIS HAPPENDED IN 1908 IN A REMOTE AREA OF SILDERIA,RUSSIA . GREAT AREAS OF TREES WERE KNOCKED DOWN BY THE BLAST.

THE BLACK HOLE

When a really large star explodes into a supernova, a strange thing happens. The star collapses so much heat all material in it squashed together. This squashed star has so much gravity that it attracts other materials, even light, toward it and sucks it all in, so that it can never escape this is called a black hole.

FACTS OF THE UNIVERSE

1. Saturn's moon Titan has plenty of evidence of

organic (life) chemicals in its atmosphere. 2. Life is known to exist only on Earth, but in 1986 NASA found what they thought might be fossils of microscopic living things in a rock from Mars. 3. Most scientists say life's basic chemicals formed on the Earth. The astronomer Fred Hoyle said they came from space. 4. Oxygen is circulated around the helmet in space suits in order to prevent the visor from misting. 5. The middle layers of space suits are blown up like a balloon to press against the astronaut's body. Without this pressure, the astronaut's body would boil! 6. The gloves included in the space suit have silicon rubber fingertips which allow the astronaut some sense of touch.

7. The full cost of a spacesuit is about $11 million although 70% of this is for the backpack and the control module. 8. Ever wondered how the pull of gravity is calculated between heavenly bodies? It's simple. Just multiply their masses together, and then divide the total by the square of the distance between them. 9. Glowing nebulae are named so because they give off a dim, red light, as the hydrogen gas in them is heated by radiation from the nearby stars. 10. The Drake Equation was proposed by astronomer Frank Drake to work out how many civilizations there could be in our galaxy - and the figure is in millions. 11. SETI is the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence - the program that analyzes radio signals from space for signs of intelligent life. 12. The Milky Way galaxy we live in: is one among the BILLIONS in space.

THE BIRTH PLACE OF STARS

A nebula is a vast cloud of hydrogen and other gases, dust and bits of interstellar matter that glows with light and many kinds of radiation. The eagle nebula shows fingers of gas throwing out eggs evaporating gaseous globules they are stellar nurseries and in billions of years they well have condensed to form stars. This image of eagle nebula, which is about 7,000 light years away, was taken by the Hubble space telescope.

PHOTO REGARDING THIS

ASTERIOD
Asteroids are a class of small Solar System bodies in orbit around the Sun. They have also been called planetoids, especially the larger ones. These terms have historically been applied to any astronomical object orbiting the Sun that did not show the disk of a planet and was not observed to have the characteristics of an active comet, but as small objects in the outer Solar System were discovered, their volatile-based surfaces were found to more closely resemble comets, and so were often distinguished from traditional asteroids. Thus the term asteroid has come increasingly to refer specifically to the small rocky and metallic bodies of the inner Solar System out to the orbit of Jupiter.

They are grouped with the outer bodiescentaurs, Neptune trojans , and transNeptunian objectsas minor planets, which is the term preferred in astronomical circles. This article will restrict the use of the term 'asteroid' to the minor planets of the inner Solar System. There are millions of asteroids, many thought to be the shattered remnants of planetesimals, bodies within the young Suns solar nebula that never grew large enough to become planets. A large majority of known asteroids orbit in the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter or co-orbital with Jupiter . However, other orbital families exist with significant populations, including the near-Earth asteroids. Individual asteroids are classified by their characteristic spectra, with the majority falling into three main