Can you give me some interesting facts about the planets and the solar system?

Question

They can be any anything but especially should be relating to the sizes, comparisons, mass, etc..

Answer 1

The Lawnchair Astronomer

URANUS COULD HAVE BEEN A GEORGE

When Uranus was first found, its discoverer, Sir William Herschel wanted the planet to be named Georgium Sidus or Georgian Star, after the king of England at the time, George III. Many French astronomers referred to it simply as Herschel and it wasn’t until later on when Johann Bode (1747—1826) proposed it be named Uranus after the mythological father of Saturn.

The Lawnchair Astronomer
© 1995
Gerry Descoteaux
522 DES

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Jupiter could have almost been a brown dwarf star.
I liked this article: Newfound Object Further Blurs Planet Definition.
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/060907_chrx73b.html
There are also some links to more articles that are interesting at the bottom of this article.
Such as: Oddball Objects: Neither Stars or Planets.
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/060803_planemo_twins.html

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Family Portrait:
The sun and nine planets pasted together in a single image. In this image gallery, enjoy a quick tour and learn some basic facts.
http://www.space.com/php/multimedia/imagegallery/igviewer.php?imgid=1232&gid=96

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Try doing an internet search of:
solar system fun facts

Answer 2

Mercury takes 59 days to make a rotation but only 88 days to circle the Sun. That means that there are fewer than 2 days in a year!

Venus is the brightest planet in our sky and can sometimes be seen with the naked eye if you know where to look

Earth has more exposed water than land. Three quarters of the Earth is covered by water!

Mars is the home of "Olympus Mons", the largest volcano found in the solar system. It stands about 27 kilometers high with a crater 81 kilometers wide.

Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system, but it spins very quickly on its axis. A day on Jupiter lasts only 9 hours and 55 minutes. Ack, I get dizzy just thinking about it!

Saturn is the second biggest planet, but it’s also the lightest planet. If there was a bathtub big enough to hold Saturn, it would float in the water!

Uranus’ axis is at a 97 degree angle, meaning that it orbits lying on its side! Talk about a lazy planet.

Neptune was discovered in 1846 (over 150 years ago). Since that time it has still yet to make a complete orbit around the sun, because one Neptune year lasts 165 Earth years!

Pluto’s orbit sometimes brings it closer to the Sun than Neptune. It jumped ahead of Neptune on September 5, 1989 and remained there until February, 1999 when it went back to being the farthest.

Note: Pluto is no longer considered a planet -- instead, astronomers call it a dwarf planet.

Answer 3

the traditional public wrongly have self belief (inspite of being taught wisely) that we get the seasons because of the fact the earth is closer the sunlight in summer and and further away in iciness. in actuality the opposite is real, and we get much less sunlight in iciness because of the fact the earth's tilted axis ability the comparable volume of sunshine has to heat up a bigger section. Pluto replaced into reclassified as a dwarf planet truly than a appropriate planet, because of the fact this type of large sort of alternative further sized products have been got here upon. each and all the planets are thought to have a rocky center, even the gasoline giants.

Answer 4

An interseting fact I learnt
from a course on astronomy which I did not know is that the stars we see now in the night time sky do not actually exist now. We are seeing something that existed many years ago. The reason is that it takes many years for light from those stars to reach our eyes.
This fact has enabled astronomers to study the lifetime of stars and learn from the past.
It turns out that stars start out as being red giants, then they become main sequence stars (the sun is at this stage) then it becomes a white dwarf and finally a supernova.
Another fact I recall which i found interesting is that we can distiguish planets from stars in the sky by the fact that you see the planets moving relative to the stars.

Answer 5

If you combined the volume of every planet except Jupiter. Jupiter would still have more volume than all the plantes combined.

Answer 6

To lazy to fire up a search engine?

Doug