The solar system consists of the sun and eight planets, with Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars as terrestrial planets, and Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune as gas giants. Each planet has unique characteristics, including size, composition, and atmospheric conditions, with Earth being the only known planet to support life. The document also highlights the formation of the solar system, the structure of each planet, and notable features such as moons and rings.

1. Solar System
Ismael Fernández Caballero
Nicolás García López Varela
Andrea Feito Bañón
4ºESO B

2. Introduction
• The Solar System comprises the Sun and its planetary
system of eight planets, as well as a number of dwarf
planets, moons, and other objects that orbit the Sun. It
formed 4.6 billion years ago from the gravitational
collapse of a giant molecular cloud. The vast majority of
the system's mass is in the Sun, with most of the
remaining mass contained in Jupiter.
• The four smaller inner planets, Mercury, Venus, Earth and
Mars, also called the terrestrial planets.
• The four outer planets, called the gas giants, are
substantially more massive than the terrestrials.
• The two largest, Jupiter and Saturn.
• The two outermost planets, Uranus and Neptune.
• All planets have almost circular orbits that lie within a
nearly flat disc called the ecliptic plane.

3. Mercury
• Diameter: 4880km
• Distance from the Sun: 57.91 million km
• Orbital period: 58.646 days
• Mercury is the closest planet to the sun, it has a rocky surface, full
with craters. It doesn’t have an atmosphere, so the temperature
can change between -183º and 467º.
• There have been two spatial missions, first in 1974 (Mariner 10) and
in 2004 (Messenger).
• Its name comes from the roman god of the messengers and the
thieves.
• Because of the Sun light it can only be seen during the twilight .

5. Venus
• Diameter:12104 km
• Distance from the Sun: 108.2 million km
• Orbital period: 224.7 days
• It has a similar size and composition as de Earth but its surface
is always covered by clouds. Because of this clouds
temperatures are extremely hot: from 120º to 470º.
• There have been 6 expeditions to Venus.
• Its name comes from the roman goddess of beauty and love.

7. THE EARTH.
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It’s the 3rd planet from the Sun.
It’s called the ‘Blue Planet’
Earth formed approximately 4.54 billion years ago
Earth gravitationally interacts with other objects in space,
especially the Sun and the Moon
• Earth rotates about its own axis 366.26 times, creating
365.26 solar days

8. Earth’s composition.
• Earth is a terrestrial planet, meaning that it is a rocky
body, rather than a gas giant like Jupiter. It is the largest of
the four terrestrial planets in size and mass. Of these four
planets, Earth also has the highest density, the highest
surface gravity, the strongest magnetic field, and fastest
rotation, and is probably the only one with active plate
tectonics.
• The mass of the Earth is approximately 5.98×1024 kg.
• It is composed mostly of iron (32.1%), oxygen (30.1%), silicon
(15.1%), magnesium (13.9%), sulfur (2.9%), nickel
(1.8%), calcium (1.5%), and aluminium (1.4%); with the
remaining 1.2% consisting of trace amounts of other
elements.

9. •
About 70.8%of the surface is covered by water. The remaining 29.2%
(148.94 million km2) not covered by water consists of mountains, deserts,
plains, plateaus…
• The Earth provides liquid water, an environment where complex organic
molecules can assemble and interact, and sufficient energy to sustain
metabolism.
• So we can live in it.

10. Mars
• Diameter: 6794 km
• Distance from the Sun: 227.94 million km
• Orbital period: 686.93 days
• It is said that there was once life in Mars, when it had a very
similar atmosphere to the Earth and there was water.
• In Mars’ surface there are a lot of volcanoes and dry rivers.
Olympus volcano is one of the biggest volcanoes in all the
solar system. It has a height of 25 km and a diameter of 600
km.
• It has two satellites: Fobos and Deimos, they are asteroids
that are trapped in Mars gravitational field.

12. Jupiter
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Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the
largest planet in the Solar System. It is a gas giant
with mass one-thousandth of that of the Sun but
is two and a half times the mass of all the other
planets in the Solar System combined. Jupiter is
classified as a gas giant along with Saturn, Uranus
and Neptune. Together, these four planets are
sometimes referred to as the Jovian or outer
planets. The planet was known by astronomers of
ancient times, and was associated with the
mythology and religious beliefs of many cultures.
The Romans named the planet after the Roman god
Jupiter.
Jupiter is primarily composed of hydrogen with a
quarter of its mass being helium, although helium
only comprises about a tenth of the number of
molecules. It may also have a rocky core of heavier
elements, but like the other gas giants, Jupiter
lacks a well-defined solid surface. Because of its
rapid rotation, the planet's shape is that of an
oblate spheroid.

13. • The outer atmosphere is
visibly segregated into
several bands at different
latitudes, resulting in
turbulence and storms along
their interacting boundaries
• Surrounding Jupiter is a
faint planetary ring system
and a powerful
magnetosphere. There are
also at least 67 moons,
including the four large
moons called the Galilean
moons that were first
discovered by Galileo in
1610. Ganymede, the largest
of these moons, has a
diameter greater than that
of the planet Mercury.

14. Saturn.
• Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second largest
planet in the Solar System.
• It’s a gas giant made up mostly of hydrogen and helium.
• It has the lowest density of all the planets, and is the only one
less dense than water.
• It spins faster than any other planet except Jupiter, completing
a rotation roughly every 10-and-a-half hours.

15. Composition and structure.
-96.3 percent molecular hydrogen, 3.25 percent helium, minor
amounts of methane, ammonia, hydrogen
deuteride, ethane, ammonia ice aerosols, water ice
aerosols, ammonia hydrosulfide aerosols.
Saturn seems to have a hot solid inner core of iron and rocky
material surrounded by an outer core probably composed of
ammonia, methane, and water.
Average distance from the sun: 885,904,700 miles
Saturn has at least 62 moons.
Saturn actually has many rings made of billions of particles of
ice and rock, ranging in size from a grain of sugar to the size of a
house.

16. • The first spacecraft to reach Saturn was
Pioneer 11 in 1979, flying within 13,700 miles
(22,000 km) of it, which discovered the
planet's two of its outer rings as well as the
presence of a strong magnetic field.

17. Uranus
• Uranus is the seventh planet
from the Sun. It has the
third-largest planetary
radius and fourth-largest
planetary mass in the Solar
System. Uranus is similar in
composition to Neptune, and
both are of different
chemical composition than
the larger gas giants Jupiter
and Saturn. For this reason,
astronomers place them in a
category called "ice giants".

18. • It is the only planet whose name
is derived from a figure from
Greek mythology rather than
Roman mythology like the other
planets, from the Latinized
version of the Greek god of the
sky, Ouranos.
• Like the other giant planets,
Uranus has a ring system, a
magnetosphere, and numerous
moons.
• The Uranian system has a unique
configuration among those of
the planets because its axis of
rotation is tilted sideways,
nearly into the plane of its
revolution about the Sun.

19. • It is the coldest planetary
atmosphere in the Solar
System, with a minimum
temperature of 49 K
(−224.2 °C), and has a complex,
layered cloud structure, with
water thought to make up the
lowest clouds, and methane the
uppermost layer of clouds. In
contrast, the interior of Uranus
is mainly composed of ices and
rock.
• Uranus's atmosphere, apart of
containing hydrogen and helium,
contains more "ices" such as
water, ammonia, and methane,
along with traces of
hydrocarbons.

20. •
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Neptune.
The planet Neptune was discovered on Sept. 23, 1846.
Neptune is the eighth and farthest planet from the Sun in the
Solar System.
Neptune goes around the sun once roughly every 165 Earth
years.
COMPOSITION:
Hydrogen - 80 percent; Helium - 19.0 percent; Methane - 1.5
percent
Neptune has 13 known moons.
Neptune's unusual rings are not uniform, but possess bright
thick clumps of dust called arcs.
NASA's Voyager 2 space satellite was the first and as yet only
spacecraft to visit Neptune on Aug. 25, 1989.