The Planets

Taught by: [Imperator]




Sections in order:

Planets:
Mercury_astronomy
Venus_astronomy
Earth_astronomy
Mars_astronomy
Jupiter_astronomy
Saturn_astronomy
Uranus_astronomy
Neptune_astronomy

Dwarf Planets:
Ceres_astronomy
Pluto_astronomy
Eris_astronomy

Other:
Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion




Terms used:

Orbit:
The path of a celestial body or an artificial satellite as it revolves around another body. Below orbit is referred to as the distance between the sun and the celestial body. As these bodies travel in circles (or something that's almost a circle, because it are actually ellipses), the distance between them and the sun is almost always the same. The value presented below is the average distance. One AU is one astronomical unit and it's the distance between the sun and the Earth.

Diameter
The length of a straight line segment passing through the center of a celestial body. Generally it says something about the size of a planet, the bigger this number, the bigger the planet.

Mass
A property of matter equal to the measure of an object's resistance to changes in either the speed or direction of its motion. The mass of an object is not dependent on gravity and therefore is different from but proportional to its weight. This sounds quite complicated. But you can compare it with an amount of material used to make up an object. When something is lighter, less material is used and it's easier to move that object than when it's heavier. (this has nothing to do with gravity, this may be very complicated to understand at first, but I'll try to explain this in another course.




Planets:

Mercury Mercury_astronomy

    orbit:  57,910,000 km (0.38 AU) from Sun
    diameter: 4,880 km
    mass:   3.30e23 kg

Venus Venus_astronomy

    orbit:  108,200,000 km (0.72 AU) from Sun
    diameter: 12,103.6 km
    mass:   4.869e24 kg

Earth Earth_astronomy

    orbit:  149,600,000 km (1.00 AU) from Sun
    diameter: 12,756.3 km
    mass:   5.972e24 kg

Mars Mars_astronomy

   orbit: 227,940,000 km (1.52 AU) from Sun
   diameter: 6,794 km
   mass: 6.4219e23 kg

Jupiter Jupiter_astronomy

    orbit:  778,330,000 km (5.20 AU) from Sun
    diameter: 142,984 km (equatorial)
    mass:   1.900e27 kg

Saturn Saturn_astronomy

    orbit:  1,429,400,000 km (9.54 AU) from Sun
    diameter: 120,536 km (equatorial)
    mass:   5.68e26 kg

Uranus Uranus_astronomy

    orbit:  2,870,990,000 km (19.218 AU) from Sun
    diameter: 51,118 km (equatorial)
    mass:   8.683e25 kg

Neptune Neptune_astronomy

    orbit:  4,504,000,000 km (30.06 AU) from Sun
    diameter: 49,532 km (equatorial)
    mass:   1.0247e26 kg





Dwarf Planets:

Ceres Ceres_astronomy

Eris Eris_astronomy

Pluto Pluto_astronomy

    orbit:  5,913,520,000 km (39.5 AU) from the Sun (average)
    diameter: 2274 km
    mass:   1.27e22 kg




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Created by [Jivo]