Did you know that Earth is not the only planet? 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 its 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. If we could see it with our own eyes, it would look grayish-brown. Like our moon, it has craters from objects in space hitting it.

Venus

The next planet is Venus, which is also very hot. Venus goes around the sun the other way compared to the other planets we are talking about. It’s like walking around a track in the opposite direction from your friends. 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.

Earth

Earth is our planet. Every person who has ever lived has lived on Earth. Scientists estimate that about 117 billion humans have ever lived on Earth. 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 atmosphere has what we need to breathe without being poisoned. It is important to protect Earth since we don’t know about another planet like it.

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 way deeper and wider than ours. Humanity suspects that Mars had liquid water and was much warmer a long, long time ago.

Jupiter

Saturn

Uranus

Neptune

Bonus: Pluto

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. With these planets, we can be sure that space will always be interesting.

Sources

NASA: https://science.nasa.gov/mercury/facts/ NASA: https://science.nasa.gov/venus/facts/ NASA: https://science.nasa.gov/mars/facts/ PRB: https://www.prb.org/news/how-many-people-have-ever-lived-on-earth/ Natural History Museum: https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/planet-mercury.html