PLANETS EARTHS MINOR

MOON

MEMBERS OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM

Terrestrial Planets  Earth-like  Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars  Inner planets Jovian Planets  Jupiter-like  Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune  Outer planets

Mercury: The Innermost Planet Venus: The Veiled Planet Mars: The Red Planet Jupiter: Lord of the Heavens Saturn: The Elegant Planet Uranus: The Sideways Planet Neptune: The Windy Planet  Uranus and Neptune are also called The Twins

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Earth now has hundreds of satellites, but only one natural satellite, the Moon, accompanies us on our annual journey around the Sun. Although other planets have moons, our planet-satellite system is unique in the solar system, because Earths Moon is unusually large compared to its parent planet. The diameter of the Moon is 3 475 kilometers (2 150 miles), about one-fourth of Earths 12,756 kilometers (7 920 miles). From calculation of the Moons mass, its density is 3.3 times that of water. This density is comparable to that of mantle rocks on Earth but is considerably less than Earths average density, which is 5.5 times that of water.

Craters. The most obvious features of the lunar surface are craters. Most craters were produced by the impact of rapidly moving debris (meteoroids), a phenomenon that was considerably more common in the early history of the solar system than it is today. Highlands. Densely pockmarked highland areas make up most of the lunar surface. In fact, all of the back side of the Moon is characterized by such topography.

Maria. The dark, fairly smooth lowlands are called maria (singular, mare). Maria basins are enormous impact craters that have been flooded with layer upon layer of very fluid basaltic lava. Regolith. All lunar terrains are mantled with a layer of gray, unconsolidated debris derived from a few billion years of meteoric bombarded.

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Asteroids: Microplanets

Are smaller bodies that have been likened to flying mountains  The largest, Ceres, is about 1000 km (600 miles) in diameter, but most of the 50, 000 that have been observed are only about 1 km across  The smallest asteroids are assumed to be no larger than grains of sand  Most lie between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter and have periods of three to six years

Comets

Are among the most interesting and unpredictable bodies in the solar system. They have been compared to dirty snowballs, because they are made of frozen gases (water, ammonia, methane, carbon dioxide, and carbon monoxide) that hold together small pieces of rocky and metallic materials  Its glowing head is called the coma  Most short period comets are thought to orbit beyond Neptune in a region called the Kuiper belt, in honor of astronomer Gerald Kuiper, who predicted their existence  Long-period comets have orbits that are not confined to the plane of the solar system appear to be distributed in all directions from the Sun, forming a spherical shell around the solar system, called the Oort cloud, after the Dutch astronomer Jan Oort


  

Meteoroids
These are small solid particles that travel through interplanetary space Become meteors when they enter Earths atmosphere and vaporize with a flash of light Meteor showers occur when Earth encounters a swarm of meteoroids, probably material lost by a comet Meteorites are the remains of meteoroids found on Earth Three types of meteorites (classified by their composition) are (1) irons, (2) stony, and (3) stonyirons One rare kind of meteorite, called carbonaceous chondrite, was found to contain amino acids and other organic compounds

 

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