General notes concerning our solar system

1. THE SOLAR SYSTEM

3. PLANETS A planet is a large, round heavenly body that orbits a star and shines with light reflected from the star. We know of eight planets that orbit the sun in our solar system. Since 1992, astronomers have also discovered many planets orbiting other stars . World book

5. MERCURY Mer | cu | ry «MUR kyuhr ee», noun. The smallest planet in the solar system and the one nearest to the sun. Its orbit about the sun takes 88 days to complete, at a mean distance of almost 36,000,000 miles. Mercury goes around the sun about four times while the earth is going around once. [< Latin Mercurius ] World Book

6. VENUS Venus is the sixth largest planet in the solar system and the second in distance from the sun. Venus is the brightest planet in the solar system and the one that comes closest to the earth. World Book

9. What is this planet called?

10. Jupiter

12. SATURN

13. SATURN Saturn is the least dense of the planets; its specific gravity (0.7) is less than that of water The ring particles seem to be composed primarily of water ice, but they may also include rocky particles with icy coatings Saturn has 34 named satellites Saturn has 7 defined rings

14. URANUS one of the larger planets in the solar system and the seventh in distance from the sun. Uranus

16. PLUTO Is Pluto a planet? NO, Pluto is not a planet. It is now considered a dwarf planet The body that decides the classification of objects in the solar system, the International Astronomical Union (IAU), has changed Pluto's status as a planet and has decided against assigning it a minor planet number. Plutoid

17. Kuiper Belt Objects

18. Oort Cloud

19. Pluto’s orbit

20. Where do we go from here?