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    101 Fun Facts About the Solar System: A Set of Seven 15-Minute Books, Educational Version
    101 Fun Facts About the Solar System: A Set of Seven 15-Minute Books, Educational Version
    101 Fun Facts About the Solar System: A Set of Seven 15-Minute Books, Educational Version
    Ebook220 pages1 hour

    101 Fun Facts About the Solar System: A Set of Seven 15-Minute Books, Educational Version

    By Jeannie Meekins

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    About this ebook

    You may think the Solar System consists of the sun and the eight planets that orbit around it. However, there are other things out there. There are comets, moons, asteroids, meteors, dust, ice, rock and much more. Plus there is a whole lot of man made junk.
    Do you know the answers to these questions about the Solar System?
    Where is The Main Asteroid Belt?
    Are all the dwarf planets out beyond Pluto?
    What is Ison?
    What formed the Kuiper Belt?
    Why do scientists say Pluto was “discovered by mistake”?
    Which planet had the potential to become a star?

    This book is a set of seven 14 Fun Facts books, plus additional facts. The books are:
    14 Fun Facts About the Solar System
    14 Fun Facts About the Sun
    14 Fun Facts About Pluto
    14 Fun Facts About Comets
    14 Fun Facts About Dwarf Planets
    14 Fun Facts About Asteroids
    14 Fun Facts About the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud

    Learn about our solar system with these books of fun facts.

    Ages 9 and up.
    Measurements in both American and Metric.
    Educational Versions Include exercises designed to meet Common Core Standards.

    LearningIsland.com believes in the value of children practicing reading for 15 minutes every day. Our 15-Minute Books give children lots of fun, exciting choices to read, from classic stories, to mysteries, to books of knowledge. Open the world of reading to a child by having them read for 15 minutes a day.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLearningIsland.com
    Release dateJan 27, 2014
    ISBN9781311824981
    101 Fun Facts About the Solar System: A Set of Seven 15-Minute Books, Educational Version
    Author

    Jeannie Meekins

    Jeannie Meekins is an Australian writer who lives with her children and a couple of cats who think they own the computer. And if her dog could read, he’d be jealous, so it’s lucky that he can’t. Jeannie has also written over 10 books for children, many available through LearningIsland.com

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      Book preview

      101 Fun Facts About the Solar System - Jeannie Meekins

      14 FUN FACTS ABOUT

      THE SOLAR SYSTEM

      By Jeannie Meekins

      A LearningIsland.com

      15 - Minute Book

      You may think the Solar System consists of the sun and the eight planets that orbit around it. However, there are other things out there. There are comets, moons, asteroids, meteors, dust, ice, rock and much more. Plus there is a whole lot of man made junk. Here are some fun facts about the solar system that you may not know.

      Fact 1: The Earth is not the center of the solar system or of the universe.

      It was once thought that the Earth was the center of the universe. People believed that Earth stayed still in space and the sun, moon, planets and all the stars orbited around it.

      In the 3rd Century BC, Aristarchus of Samos suggested a sun-based universe. His theories had the sun and stars as fixed objects and the Earth and planets revolving around the sun in perfect circles.

      This was generally dismissed and Earth was considered the center of the universe for many hundreds of years.

      In 1543, Nicolaus Copernicus believed that the sun was the center of the universe. It must be remembered that this was nearly 70 years before the invention of the telescope and people thought that what they could see in the night sky was all that existed.

      Copernicus based his theory on the orbits of the planets. His calculations for their orbits did not work if they went around the Earth. However, it did work if they orbited the sun.

      Other astronomers took up his work and the facts became indisputable.

      We know now that the sun is the center of our solar system, but even it is far from being the center of the universe.

      The Solar System, including Pluto (NASA/JPL)

      Fact 2: There are eight planets in our Solar System.

      There are eight planets in our Solar System. They are, in order of distance from the sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

      The first four planets are rock worlds. The other four are gas giants.

      Pluto used to be considered a planet, but it is just too small. It is now classified as a dwarf planet.

      Beyond Pluto are other objects that orbit our sun. Four more dwarf planets have been found. Three beyond Pluto and one in The Main Asteroid Belt, between Mars and Jupiter. There may be more. Unless astronomers find anything out there that is really huge, we will continue to have eight major planets in our Solar System.

      Dione, one of Saturn’s moons, with the planet in the background

      Fact 3: Most of the planets in our Solar System have moons.

      All of the planets, except Mercury and Venus, have moons.

      Planets orbit the sun due to the sun’s gravitational pull on them. Moons orbit planets on the same basis. The bigger the planet, the bigger its gravitational pull.

      The bigger the planet, the more moons they seem to have. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are almost like mini solar systems. Saturn has 53 moons that we know of.

      The planet Jupiter

      Fact 4: Jupiter had the potential to become a star.

      Jupiter is a gas giant. Scientists believe that it had the potential to become a star.

      Everything, no matter how microscopic, has a gravitational attraction. Atoms float around in space for billions of years, attracting other atoms. The more stuff that gets collected, the bigger the object becomes, and the more stuff it can attract.

      Gas clouds form. The object becomes denser and hotter, eventually igniting. A star is born.

      Jupiter has all the necessary elements to become a star – except the size. As it was forming, it could not collect enough mass to make it big enough to ignite. Scientists believe that our sun is responsible for this. The closeness of the sun and Jupiter made it impossible for both of them to have become stars.

      Birth of an Earth-like Planet (Artist concept)

      Fact 5: A planet may have tried to form between Mars and Jupiter.

      Between Mars and Jupiter is a band of rocky rubble called The Main Asteroid Belt.

      Another planet may have tried to form in this region. It is thought that this didn’t happen because of its location.

      In the early days of our solar system everything was still gas, dust and rock. Anything in this area would have been pulled on equally by both the sun and Jupiter. The forces would have constantly torn apart any planet trying to form.

      Instead, there is a ring of rocky rubble orbiting our sun in this area.

      Hubble tracks the Main Asteroid Belt

      Fact 6: There are more than one million asteroids in The Main Asteroid Belt.

      Ceres is the largest object in the belt. It was also the first to be discovered. It is about 621 miles (1000 km) across. Originally classified an asteroid, Ceres has now been upgraded to dwarf planet.

      The largest asteroid in the belt is 2 Pallas, while the slightly smaller 4 Vesta has more mass. The number in front of the name is the order in which the object was found.

      About 35 asteroids are more than 125 miles (200 km) across. Another 1,000 are more than 12 miles (20 km) across. There are over one million asteroids that are more than a kilometre across.

      It is generally accepted that the dinosaurs were wiped out when the Earth was struck by an object only 6 miles (10 km) in size. This means that there are thousands of asteroids – as well as comets, meteors and other objects – that have the potential to devastate our Earth.

      You shouldn’t worry. Many countries are aware of this. They have set up organizations to search for any such objects that may be on a collision course with Earth – and to figure out ways to prevent this from happening.

      The Kuiper Belt

      Fact 7: Comets come from our Solar System.

      Comets are icy bodies that have a rocky core. As they near the sun, the ice begins to melt and a long tail can be seen streaming out behind them.

      Way out in space, far beyond Pluto, are regions of gas and dust and space objects that orbit our sun. Like the names suggest, the Oort Cloud is a cloud of debris, whereas the Kuiper Belt stretches through space like our Milky Way. This is where comets come from.

      All comets that have been found come from inside our Solar System. We know this because we can track

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