Solar System
Welcome to Earth, the 3rd planet from the sun! The sun is in the center of our solar system, warming and lighting all the planets, even those far, far away. We are 93 million miles from the sun. That is over 3,700 walks around our planet.
When you look up in the sky at night, you are seeing stars that are millions upon millions
of miles away. Sometimes you can even see the other planets in our solar system. Did you
know there are 9 planets including Earth that move around our sun? The 9 planets in the
solar system are Mars, Venus, Earth, Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto.
Earth is the only planet to support life, though scientists continue to study other planets
for evidence of other life forms.
Have you ever been to outer space? I haven’t, but many animals have. Laika the Dog was the first animal in space. Other animals in space have been monkeys, rats, frogs, beetles, wasps, bees, newts, fish and even jellyfish. And yes, also humans.
So take a trip with me to learn about our solar system, our sun, our planet, and our moon. And who knows, maybe you’ll be the next animal to go to explore our solar system.
-- Araña Pequeña
Planet Earth
By Emily Tran
What do you know about Earth besides the fact that we live on it?
Did you know that the Earth was formed four and a half billion years ago?
Do you know how it was formed? Do you know why there are 365 days in a year and 24
hours in a day? Well, I'm here to share these answers!
Earth began as a huge cloud of dust and gas. As time went on, gravity helped that cloud of dust clump together to form the planet we all know as Earth!
The Earth is made up of 4 layers. The layers are the crust, mantle, outer core, and inner core. We live on the crust, the outermost layer of the Earth. The Earth's crust is very thin compared to the other layers. The next layer under the crust is the mantle. The mantle is the largest layer of the Earth. The mantle has a very high temperature, because it is made up of a very hot rock. Even hotter than that is the outer core. It can have temperatures from 4,000 degrees F to as high as 9,000 degrees F. The innermost layer, the inner core is just as hot as the outer core! It has temperatures as high as 9,000 F. The inner and outer cores have temperatures so high that they melt all the metals inside!
When I heard that there are 365 days in a year, I wondered why 365? Well, the reason is because it takes 365 days for the Earth to orbit around the sun. It takes 365 days for the Earth to orbit around the sun and be back at the same position it was at last year. The Earth is also spinning on its own axis while orbiting the sun. The Earth takes 24 hours to rotate or spin around its axis. That is how we measure a day.
So, four and a half billion years after the Earth formed, we have figured out how the Earth formed, what it is made of, and why there are 365 days in a year.
The Sun
By Haris Lefteri
The sun is a star, just like all the other stars we can see at night. Stars are huge masses of hot, burning gas. The sun is about 4.6 billion years old, and it is the center of our solar system.
As Earth turns, the sun appears to move across the sky. This is not because the sun is moving. Earth is rotating, making it look as if the sun moves from east to west in our sky.
For us, the sun is beautiful and useful because it heats our planet and gives us light during the day. The sun’s importance is so great that Earth would not have life without it. We would freeze to death without its heat and energy that reaches us. This energy warms our days and helps green plants absorb sunlight and convert it into food.
So, why can’t we just go and live on the sun? Because its temperature is too high for any living organism to exist there. Its surface is 50 times hotter than boiling water! Water boils at 212° F. Can you imagine that?
The Moon
By Sanela Brekalo
Do you ever wonder how the Earth is different from the moon?
For starters there is no liquid water on the moon, only ice. Another
difference between the Earth and the moon is that there is a lower amount of
gravity on the moon. Also, the wide range of temperatures on the moon
would make you freeze in an instant or burn to a crisp.
If you walked from a point on one side of the moon straight through the center to the other side you would have traveled 2,160 miles. The distance from the Earth to the moon is 238,857 miles. To give you a better understanding of that distance imagine over four million continuous football fields.
It takes the moon 27 days to orbit the Earth. Throughout a month the moon changes its appearance in the sky. Sometimes it is round and sometimes we see only a crescent (a small part or sliver) of it. This is because of the positions of the sun, moon and Earth.
Spacecraft have been visiting the Moon since 1959. The first human on the moon was Neil Armstrong on July 20, 1969. If Neil Armstrong might have weighed 150 pounds on Earth, on the moon he would have only weighed 26 pounds because the moon has less gravity than Earth.
