-Stretches approximately 100,000 light years in diameter.

-Spiral Formation Galaxy.

-Super-massive black hole in center of galaxy known as Sagittarius A*.

-In the time it takes you to finish this sentence, you will have been carried along by the sun and the earth through 750 miles of actual raw space.

-Our solar system is located approximately 26,000 light years from Sgt A*.

-Period of revolution around galaxy: 220 million years.

-Equatorial rotation period: 25 days.

-Our Sun (also known as Sol) has sunspot regions on it’s visible layer during a 11 year cycle which helps us determine the Sun’s solar cycle and rotation period.

-The hottest layer of the Sun, known as the corona, typically reaches temperatures in the range of 1 million Kelvin. That’s 1,799,540° F!

Recommendations: SPF 1 million.

-Closest to the Sun.

-Period of revolution: 88 days.

-Large iron core.

-Temperature: 700 Kelvin by

day/ 100 Kelvin by night.

-Before 2008, scientists had

observed only 40% of the

planets surface.Mercury has been thought to have

collided with a massive asteroid big

enough to leave a hilly terrain on the

opposite side of the impact. Unknown terrain

-Known as the “Morning Star”.

-Period of revolution: 225 days.

-Temperature: 750 Kelvin.

-Venus is covered with gently rolling hills, two continents, and numerous volcanoes.

-Venus is hotter than Mercury because it is covered with huge sulfur clouds that cause an out of control greenhouse effect on it’s surface.

-On Venus it rains sulfuric acid!!

-Scientists suggest that Venus was hit by an asteroid roughly the size of the planet which caused Venus to slowly rotate clockwise rather than counter-clockwise like the rest of our solar system.

-Period of revolution: 365 days.

-Only known planet to inhabit life.

-Tilted 24° from it’s axis.

-Water covers 71% of earth’s surface.

-Sidereal period of revolution: 27 days.

-First landing on moon: July 20th 1969.

-Our moon is in synchronous rotation which causes us to see only one side of the moon.

-Period of rotation: 687 days.

- 95% of atmosphere is composed of carbon-dioxide.

-Has the largest known volcano called Olympus Mons. 3x the size of Mt. Everest.

-Surface features indicate that water once flowed on Mars.

Valles Marineris: Enormous canyon that stretches the length of the U.S.

Phobos and Deimos: Planetesimals captured by the gravitational pull of Mars.

-Between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter are believed to be millions of such bodies, called asteroids which form a giant ring called the asteroid belt.

-Asteroids are composed primarily of metal and rock. The largest asteroid, Ceres, has a diameter of about 900km.

Jupiter

Mars

-Io: Snows sulfuric acid on surface.

-Europa: Icy surface which suggests water inside the moon.

-Ganymede: The largest moon in the solar system.

-Callisto: Appears to be homogeneous (no iron core).

-Period of rotation: 12 years.

-Jupiter’s clouds are in perpetual motion and are confined to narrow bands of rising and falling gases.

-Rotates once every 10 hours (the fastest of the planets).

Great Red

Spot!!

-Period of revolution: 30 years.

-Saturn’s spectacular rings are composed of fragments of ice and rock from moons and asteroids that have come too close to Saturn's Roche limit.

-Saturn has two moons known as the Shepherd moons which create a gap in Saturn’s ring system.

-Scientists discovered a storm on Saturn in 1994. Located near it’s equator, it stretches 12,700 km across, making its diameter roughly the same as that of the Earth.

F Ring: Gap between rings created by the Shepherd moons.

-Period of revolution: 84 years.

-Magnetic field is 50 times stronger than that of the Earth.

-Uranus remarkably is tilted 59° from its axis of rotation causing it to rotate almost completely sideways.

-The moons of Uranus also rotate sideways on the planets axis, making it quite a unique sight.

-Uranus also has its own ring system similar to Saturn. They were discovered by accident in 1977 when the planet passed in front of a star. The star’s light was momentarily blocked by each ring, thereby revealing their existence to astronomers.

-Period of revolution: 165 years.

-The winds on Neptune blow as fast as 2000 km/h among the fastest in the solar system.

-The Great Dark Spot, whose diameter at the time was about the same size as the Earth’s diameter, is near the center of this picture. It has since vanished. Note the white, wispy methane clouds.

-Neptune has eight known moons. Seven have irregular shapes and highly elliptical orbits, which suggest that Neptune captured them.

-Period of revolution: 249 years.

-On August 24, 2006, Scientists decided that Pluto is no longer a planet because it doesn’t clean up debris outside it’s atmosphere.

Three properties to define a planet:

1. Needs to be spherical.

2. Needs to revolve around a sun.

3. Needs to be able to clean up debris outside it’s atmosphere.

-This belt of comets extends out some 500 AU from the sun. Astronomers estimate that the belt contains at least 200 million comets.

Most comets that eventually return to the inner solar system and develop the long tails that we usually associate with are believed to come from a region out beyond the orbit of Pluto called the Kuiper belt.