Everybody knows about the Earth, but people usually don’t know as much about other planets. There are seven other planets that go around our Sun, like Earth. Let’s look at each one, starting with the one closest to the Sun!

Mercury

Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun, and it goes around the sun the fastest. Even though it goes around the sun fast, its days are way longer than Earth’s days. It’s also the smallest planet of the ones that go around the Sun. Since it’s so close to the sun, it can get very hot. But it doesn’t have air like Earth has air, so the dark side gets super cold. It also doesn’t have seasons. If we could see it up close with our own eyes, it would look grayish-brown. Like our moon, it has craters from objects in space hitting it. Mercury is too small and close to the Sun to have its own moon.

Venus

The next planet is Venus, which is also very hot. Venus spins in the opposite direction to the other planets. Venus is bigger than Mercury and is close to the size of Earth, but it is very hot. Even though this planet is so unusual, it has volcanoes and mountains like Earth. A long time ago, we sent machines to Venus, and got photos of the surface. The air there is very thick, poisonous, and yellow. Like Mercury, Venus does not have a moon.

Earth

Earth is our planet. Every person who has ever lived has lived on Earth. Scientists believe that way more people have lived here in total than do now. Before people went to space in the 1960s, no one had ever left our planet. It is the only planet we know that has life, and the only planet we can survive on. Temperatures are pleasant for us and the the sky has the air we breathe. It is important to protect Earth since we don’t know another planet like it. One of the most obvious things in the night sky is our moon, sometimes called Luna.

Mars

Mars is probably the most well known planet besides Earth. It is often called the “Red Planet,” because of its the color of its surface. Mars is farther from the Sun than Earth, meaning that it is darker there. Still, it is much closer than the planets after this. Mars has big dust storms and the largest volcano we know about, Olympus Mons. It also has big canyons, like Valles Marineris, which are sometimes way deeper and wider than what we have on Earth. People think that Mars had liquid water and was much warmer a long, long time ago. Mars has moons Phobos and Deimos, meaning fear and terror.

Jupiter

Jupiter is the biggest of the planets that go around the Sun. The inside of the planet might be solid, but it’s mostly gas. Because of that, it is called a “gas giant.” It has stripes of many colors: some are brown or white, and others look more blue. Storms can lie in these clouds, and a popular example is the Great Red Spot. Unlike Earth’s storms, the storms on Jupiter can last for hundreds of years. Also, while the closer planets have no moons or maybe one or two, Jupiter has at least 101 moons. The biggest one, called Ganymede, is larger than Mercury. It also has rings, but they are mostly invisible to us.

Saturn

Saturn is the second biggest planet after Jupiter. It’s like Jupiter because it is a gas giant with varying colors and with its own form of weather. It does win over Jupiter in one way, though: it has nearly 300 moons as of the writing of this article. Saturn is also known for its stunning rings, which we can see from different angles as time passes by. Though it is bright in the night sky, you need to use binoculars or a telescope to be able to see the rings.

Uranus

Uranus (said like “your-uhh-nuss”) is very far from the sun, which means that you can’t see it with just your eyes in the night sky. You can see all the earlier planets yourself. Still, Uranus is an interesting planet. While most planets, like Earth, spin around an imaginary line (called an axis) that is close to “up,” Uranus’s line of rotation is sideways. It’s like something moving along as it rolls like a ball, instead of like a spinning top. This rotation gives the planet strong seasons, even more than others talked about here. Like Jupiter, the rings are very faint and not good for seeing in a telescope.

Neptune

You might have seen the photo of Neptune as a dark or vibrant blue (like in the image here), but it’s more white with a blueish tint, like Uranus. It is a bit bluer than Uranus, though, because its air is more active, and there are less of certain gases blocking the color. Many people think that Uranus and Neptune are super cold. After all, they are called the “ice giants.” But actually, Neptune is much hotter than Uranus and gives out a lot of heat. This creates really fast winds on the planet.

Bonus: Pluto

Is Pluto a planet? Is it not? It is one of the big arguments of our time. Science has decided that it probably isn’t, and is instead a dwarf planet. For our solar system, a planet must go around the sun, be mostly circular, and not have much else in its path. Pluto fails that last rule, so it isn’t a full planet. If it was a planet, we’d have to add planets like Ceres (say it like “sair-eez”) and Makemake (say it like “mahh-kay mahh-kay”). That would be a hassle!

Review

There are a lot of planets. There are even planets outside of our solar system. Some are hot, some are cold, some are rocky, and some are full of gas. Some orbit (or move around) the sun alone or with few moons, and others have hundreds of moons as companions. With these planets, we can be sure that space will always be interesting.