If you would like to learn more about the planets in our solar system you have come to the right place. Here you will find amazing facts and figures explaining more about what we know about the closest planets to our home planet Earth and the centre of our solar system the Sun.
Thanks to advancements in technology in the last 100 years we can now look deeper into the Kosmos and explore planets and stars in more detail than ever before. NASA has even sent Rovers to far-off planets to explore their surface and probes that have left our solar system and are now hundreds of thousands of miles from our home planet.
If you have ever looked up at the sky at night and wondered what it would be like to walk on another planet or fly through the stars to visit distant galaxies. You are joining the scientists and astronomers who have studied the stars for hundreds of years.
In the image above you might also spot a dwarf planet called Pluto beyond the orbit of Neptune. This was once classed as a planet when it was discovered in the 1930’s. However during he 1990’s Pluto’s classification was changed to a dwarf planet as due to the discovery of several objects of similar size in the Kuiper belt. The Kuiper belt is the outer Solar System, further out from planet Neptune.
There are a lot of things to learn about our solar system. For example, did you know that the sun is actually a star? And that it’s the closest star to Earth? The sun is huge! It’s about 333,000 times the size of Earth. And it’s so bright that it’s hard to look at it with your bare eyes. The Sun isn’t the only thing in our solar system, of course. There are also planets, moons, asteroids, comets, and more. Our solar system is huge! And there’s still so much to learn about it. For example, scientists are still trying to figure out how the planets formed. So there’s definitely a lot to explore when it comes to our solar system.
Here on Planets for Kids we will explain facts about the planets within our Solar System. There are 8 planets that orbit or move around our Sun and they are called : Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. These 8 planets can then be separated into two planetary categories, Terrestrial Planets and Gas Giants.
The four Gas Giants can be spilt again into a sub category called Ice Giants which consists of Uranus and Neptune due to their makeup being made up of large quantities of ice and rock.
Learn about our Solar System with our friendly Robonauts, who will help you explore the planets in our Solar System with exciting games and activities you can carry out with your class..
The Terrestrial Planets consist of Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars, and the Gas Giants which do not have solid surfaces are Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. The 4 Gas Giants can be spilt again into a sub category called Ice Giant which consists of Uranus and Neptune due to their makeup being made up of large quantities of ice and rock. In your journey through the Solar System you will learn fantastic facts and figures about all the planets, with help from our team of Robonauts.
Click here to download a PDF worksheet for the planets in our Solar System