Quick Writes

January 2-6

Venus is one of the brightest objects in space visible in the night sky. Knowing its location, Venus is still visible during daytime. Because of its distance from the Sun, a full revolution is shorter than that of Earths’. Upon examination using a telescope, Venus’ surface is covered by a thick layer of sulphuric acid clouds. These clouds are formed because of the volcanoes abundant on the planet. Even if the planet named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty, its surface doesn’t seem to be emanating love because the planet itself looks like a big volcano.

Venus

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Jupiter, known as Zeus in Greek mythology, over threw his father Saturn to become king of the gods. He then split the universe with his brothers Neptune and Pluto.

Jupiter is by far the largest planet in our Solar System. The Earth could fit inside Jupiter more than 1000 times. Jupiter is a very stormy planet. There are storms found throughout the atmosphere, and most of the storms seem to never end. The many different cloud formations and storms in the atmosphere also make Jupiter a very colorful planet.Jupiter is considered a gas giant because it does not have a solid surface. Under its atmosphere is a large liquid ocean of hydrogen and water.

Jupiter

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Mars is reddish in color and was named after the god of war of the ancient Romans. Mars is the only planet whose surface can be seen in detail from the Earth. Mars is the fourth closest planet to the Sun and the next planet beyond the Earth. Surface Mars is a terrestrial planet. It has a hard rocky surface that you could walk on. Mars' surface is dry and much of it is covered with a reddish dust and rocks. Mars has two permanent polar ice caps. Atmosphere The Martian atmosphere consists of carbon dioxide (95 percent), nitrogen (2.7 percent), argon (1.6 percent), oxygen (0.2 percent) and trace amounts of water vapor and carbon monoxide. Gravity The surface gravity on Mars is only about 38% of the surface gravity on Earth. If you weigh 100 pounds on Earth then you would weigh only 38 pounds on Mars.

Mars

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Of all the planets in our solar system, Saturn is the most interesting and unique. It is one of the biggest planets in size. The yellow planet with the wide, flat rings is the sixth planet from the sun and sits between Jupiter and Uranus. Recent exploratory missions to the planet have revealed many interesting features that will be of interest to scientists for years to come.Saturn is the second largest planet behind Jupiter with a fast rotation and one of the longest orbits around the sun. Saturn orbits the sun every 29 years. Saturn is tilted 27 degrees on its axis and rotates fairly fast as it orbits the sun, completing one rotation in 11 hours. Because of its fast rotation, the poles on Saturn are flat. Earth, by comparison, takes 24 hours to complete a rotation around its axis and takes one year to rotate around the sun. Saturn is 75 times larger than Earth. Saturn is also the least dense of all the planets in the solar system and is less dense than water that it could even float on top of water!

Saturn was the Roman god of agriculture. He was called Cronus by the Greeks. He is the son of Uranus and the father of Jupiter. Saturn overthrew his father to become king of the gods, but was then overthrown himself by his son Jupiter.

Saturn

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After Pluto was declassified as a planet, Neptune became the farthest planet from the sun. Neptune's diameter is about 30,200 miles or almost 4 times the Earth's diameter. The planet was named after the Roman sea God.

Neptune is so far away that it took the space probe Voyager 2, 12 years to reach it. Neptune is the stormiest planet. The winds there can blow up to 1,240 miles per hour, that is three times as fast as Earth's Hurricanes. The planet has a system of thin dark rings but they are incomplete rings and are best described as arcs. Neptune is a sea blue color due to the methane gas in its atmosphere. Neptune once had a great dark spot similar to Jupiter.Neptune has its own heat source, it emits a quantity of energy 2.7 times greater than it receives. Neptune has 8 known moons.Neptune is 30 times farther from the sun as is the Earth.

Neptune

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