Ready Jet Go! . Videos| PBS KIDS. Mindy's Constellation Exploration | Ready Jet Go! | Preschool | Interactive. Solar System, Solar System Information. Our Cosmic Neighborhood From our small world we have gazed upon the cosmic ocean for thousands of years. Ancient astronomers observed points of light that appeared to move among the stars. They called these objects "planets," meaning wanderers, and named them after Roman deities—Jupiter, king of the gods; Mars, the god of war; Mercury, messenger of the gods; Venus, the goddes of love and beauty, and Saturn, father of Jupiter and god of agriculture. The stargazers also observed comets with sparkling tails, and meteors or shooting stars apparently falling from the sky.
Since the invention of the telescope, three more planets have been discovered in our solar system: Uranus (1781), Neptune (1846), and, now downgraded to a dwarf planet, Pluto (1930). In addition, there are thousands of small bodies such as asteroids and comets. The four planets closest to the sun—Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars—are called the terrestrial planets because they have solid rocky surfaces. —Text courtesy NASA/JPL. Solar System Scope. Home and City || Version 2.0. Our Solar System. Our solar system consists of the sun, planets, dwarf planets (or plutoids), moons, an asteroid belt, comets, meteors, and other objects.
The sun is the center of our solar system; the planets, over 61 moons, the asteroids, comets, meteoroids and other rocks and gas all orbit the Sun. The Planets The nine planets that orbit the sun are (in order from the Sun): Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter (the biggest planet in our Solar System), Saturn (with large, orbiting rings), Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto (a dwarf planet or plutoid). A belt of asteroids (minor planets made of rock and metal) orbits between Mars and Jupiter. These objects all orbit the sun in roughly circular orbits that lie in the same plane, the ecliptic (Pluto is an exception; this dwarf planet has an elliptical orbit tilted over 17° from the ecliptic).
The inner planets (those planets that orbit close to the Sun) are quite different from the outer planets (those planets that orbit far from the Sun). Find It! StarChild: The Solar System. The Solar System Listen to an audio version of this page. Solar System Activities The StarChild site is a service of the High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center (HEASARC), Dr. Alan Smale (Director), within the Astrophysics Science Division (ASD) at NASA/GSFC. StarChild Authors: The StarChild Team StarChild Graphics & Music: Acknowledgments StarChild Project Leader: Dr. Kids - Planets and moons - Highlights.