Venus is the brightest planet in the Solar System and can be seen even in daylight if you know

where to look. When Venus is west of the Sun, she rises before the Sun in the morning and is
known as the Morning Star. When she is east of the Sun, she shines in the evening just after
sunset and is known as the Evening Star.
Venus orbits round the sun in 225 days. The Earth takes 365 days to complete an orbit of the
sun. So a year on Venus only lasts for 262 days!
The planets in the Solar system are given the names of
Roman Gods or their attendants. Venus is called after the Roman
Goddess of love and beauty.
Venus is the planet which is closest to the Earth and is a little
smaller than the Earth. The circumference of the Earth (the
distance right round the middle of the Earth at the equator) is
12,760 kilometres. The circumference of Venus is 12,103
kilometres.
Venus, like the other planet between the Earth and the Sun, Mercury, has no moons. Venus is 67
million miles, or 108 million kilometres, from the Sun
Venus is covered by clouds of water vapour and sulphuric acid and the surface cannot be seen
with an ordinary astronomy telescope.
Venus is the hottest planet in the Solar System, even hotter than
Mercury, which is closer to the Sun. The temperature on the surface of
Venus is about 460 Celsius. Compare this to a warm summers day
in London, when the temperature might be 26 Celsius.
The atmosphere on Venus is composed of carbon dioxide. The surface
is heated by radiation from the sun, but the heat cannot escape through
the clouds and layer of carbon dioxide. (This is a greenhouse effect).
In 1975 the Soviet Union sent two spacecraft landers to Venus, Venera
9 and Venera 10. These landers were the very first to reach the planets surface and they sent
back images to the Earth. It is not a very clear picture but it is famous since this is the first
photograph we have of the surface of Venus.

There is no life at all on Venus and life could never be supported there because of the extreme
heat and the atmosphere.
The mountains and craters on Venus have all been given female names such as the crater called
Billie Holiday after a female American jazz singer.
 The Red Planet, as Mars is often called, is the fourth planet from
the sun (Earth is the third). In a lot of ways, Mars looks a lot like our home,
though instead of blue oceans and green land, Mars is home to an ever
present red tint. This is due to a mineral called iron oxide that is very
common on the planets surface. However, when you look past the surface
differences, these two planets are similar in a lot of ways. Here are just a
few:
Polar Ice Caps Mars has both North and South polar ice caps, much like Earth. Also like
Earth, both ice caps are made mostly of frozen water. With so much water frozen in the ice caps
of Mars, some scientists think that life could have once existed there.
Length of a Year Mars is farther from the Sun than Earth is. As a result, a typical year on
Mars is 687 days.
Length of a Day While a year on Mars might be almost twice as long as a year on Earth, the
length of a day there is almost identical. A Martian day is 24 hours and 39 minutes long, less
than an hour longer than a day on Earth.
Seasons Mars has seasons like Earth too. These seasons are much longer than Earth seasons
because Mars is so much farther from the sun. And dont get your swim suits out just yet the
average high during a Martian summer day is 23 degrees F (-5 degrees C) not exactly beach
weather.
Mars and Earth are similar in so many ways that its almost hard to believe we havent found
anything alive there. But, dont forget that there are many differences too. Without these
differences, Mars wouldnt be such an interesting planet to study.
A lot of planets are bigger than Earth. For example, 318 Earths could fit inside of Jupiter. Mars
is not quite so big. In fact, Mars is one of only two planets in the solar system to be significantly
smaller than Earth. If you looked at the two planets side by side, Earth would be a basketball
while Mars is a softball.
But, just because Mars is smaller doesnt mean it is without landmarks. The surface of Mars is
filled with exciting locations.

Olympus Mons on Mars is the largest mountain in the solar system at more than
25 kilometers high (thats three times higher than Mount Everest). It is so big
that astronomers could see it through telescopes in the 19th century, almost 200
years ago!

Valles Marineris is the largest canyon in the solar system, stretching 4,000 kilometers across the
planets surface. If you look at a picture of Mars taken from a telescope, you will see the giant gash that
is Valles Marineris.

Mars is covered by craters from objects like asteroids and meteorites hitting the planet. Today,
43,000 such craters have been found and that only includes the large ones!
 Mars doesnt have a protective layer of atmosphere like Earth, so it cannot store heat from the
sun. As a result, the temperature on Mars regularly drops to -125 degrees F (-82 degrees C) in
the winter and only rises to 23 degrees F (-5 degrees C) in the summer.
The dust storms on Mars are larger than on any other planet in the solar system. Some dust
storms on Mars can blanket almost the entire planet in just a
few days

Jupiter is the giant of the Solar System, with a mass more than 300 times the mass of the Earth
and is called after the ancient Roman sky-god, Jupiter, known to the Greeks as Zeus.

Jupiter has a diameter of 88,700 miles, or 142,750 kilometres.

Jupiter is the fifth planet in order from the Sun and is about 483 million miles, or 777 million
kilometres from the Sun. The Earth is much closer to the Sun than it is to Jupiter.
Distances from the Sun are measured in Astronomical Units (AU). The Earth is the standard
unit, and is one AU from the Sun, so an AU equals 150 million kilometres (93 million miles),
the distance of the Earth from the Sun. Figure 2 shows the distance from the sun of the first five
planets, Mercury 0.4 AU, Venus 0.7 AU, Earth 1AU, Mars 1.5 AU and Jupiter 5.2 AU.

All planets in the Solar system orbit round the Sun. The Earth takes just over 365 days, so the
Earths year is 365 days. It takes Jupiter 11.9 of the Earths years to make its orbit round the
Sun.
Although Jupiters orbit, and therefore its year, is so much longer than the Earths, its day is
much shorter. The Earth turns on its own axis, turning away from the Sun and so giving us day
and night, once every 24 hours. Jupiter spins round much faster, turning on its axis once every
9.84 hours!
This fast spinning gives rise to very strong weather patterns in the clouds which surround the
planet and so its appearance changes rapidly.
Jupiter is the stormiest planet in the Solar System. There is a permanent, but ever-changing
whirlpool of storms, known as Jupiters Great Red Spot which can be seen using a
telescope. The Red Spot was first seen by Robert Hooke in 1664.
Jupiter is the first of the gas giants, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.
The gas giants are entirely composed of dense layers of gas.
 Jupiter is made of hydrogen, helium, methane and ammonia. The cloudy sphere has bright belts
on it which change their shape.

Jupiter can be seen without a telescope and so was known in the ancient world, but it was not until the
invention of telescopes that astronomers were able to see Jupiters moons.

There are 64 moons in total, four of which are large enough to be easily observed with a small
telescope.
The first person to discover and observe Jupiters moons was Galileo (1564-1642). Closest to
Jupiter is Io, further away is Europa, and there are two large outer moons, Ganymede and
Callisto.
Io is so close to the planet that the pull of Jupiters gravity is constantly disturbing Ios surface
with volcanic eruptions.
Europa is coated with smooth ice, while Ganymede and Callisto both have much older ice,
deeply pitted with craters.
Q. What year did the Soviet Union send spacecraft to Venus?
Q. What where the spacecraft called that the Soviet Union sent?
Q. How many moons does Venus have?
Q. Venus is named after a Roman Goddess which one?
Q. How long does it take to orbit the Sun?
Q. How far is the planet from the Sun?
Q. How hot can it get on Venus?

Q. What temperature can it drop to on Mars in winter?

Q. How high is Olympus Mons?
Q. How long is a typical year on Mars?
Q. What is the largest canyon called?
Q. How long is the largest canyon?

Q. How many moons does Jupiter have?

Q. Can you name two of these moons?
Q. Who was the first person to discover Jupiter?
Q. What is the ever-changing whirlpool of storms called?
Q. How long does it take Jupiter to orbit the Sun?
Q. How far is Jupiter from the Sun?