BLACK HOLES

A black hole is a region in space where the pulling force of gravity is so strong that light is not able to escape. The strong
gravity occurs because matter has been pressed into a tiny space. This compression can take place at the end of a
star's life. Some black holes are a result of dying stars.Because no light can escape, black holes are invisible. However,
space telescopes with special instruments can help find black holes. They can observe the behavior of material and
stars that are very close to black holes.

How Big Are Black Holes?

Black holes can come in a range of sizes, but there are three main types of black holes. The black hole's mass and size
determine what kind it is.
The smallest ones are known as primordial black holes. Scientists believe this type of black hole is as small as a single
atom but with the mass of a large mountain.
The most common type of medium-sized black holes is called "stellar." The mass of a stellar black hole can be up to 20
times greater than the mass of the sun and can fit inside a ball with a diameter of about 10 miles. Dozens of stellar mass
black holes may exist within the Milky Way galaxy.
The largest black holes are called "supermassive." These black holes have masses greater than 1 million suns combined
and would fit inside a ball with a diameter about the size of the solar system. Scientific evidence suggests that every large
galaxy contains a supermassive black hole at its center. The supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way
galaxy is called Sagittarius A. It has a mass equal to about 4 million suns and would fit inside a ball with a diameter about
the size of the sun.

How Do Black Holes Form?

Stellar black holes form when the center of a very massive star collapses in upon itself. This collapse also causes a
supernova, or an exploding star, that blasts part of the star into space.
Scientists think supermassive black holes formed at the same time as the galaxy they are in. The size of the
supermassive black hole is related to the size and mass of the galaxy it is in.

SOLAR SYSTEM
1. Our solar system is made up of the sun and everything that travels around it. This
includes eight planets and their natural satellites such as Earth's moon; dwarf planets
such as Pluto and Ceres; asteroids; comets and meteoroids.
2. The sun is the center of our solar system. It contains almost all of the mass in our
solar system and exerts a tremendous gravitational pull on planets and other bodies.
3. Our solar system formed about 4.6 billion years ago.
4. The four planets closest to the sun -- Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars -- are called the
terrestrial planets because they have solid, rocky surfaces.
5. Two of the outer planets beyond the orbit of Mars -- Jupiter and Saturn -- are known as
gas giants; the more distant Uranus and Neptune are called ice giants.
6. Most of the known dwarf planets exist in an icy zone beyond Neptune called the Kuiper
Belt, which is also the point of origin for many comets.
7. Many objects in our solar system have atmospheres, including planets, some dwarf
planets and even a couple moons.
8. Our solar system is located in the Orion Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy. There are most
likely billions of other solar systems in our galaxy. And there are billions of galaxies in
the Universe.
9. We measure distances in our solar system by Astronomical Units (AU). One AU is equal
to the distance between the sun and the Earth, which is about 150 million km (93
million miles).
10.
NASA's twin Voyager1 and Voyager2 spacecraft are the first spacecraft to explore
the outer reaches of our solar system.

PLANETS OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM

The eight planets that orbit the sun are (in order from the sun): Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars,
Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune. Another large body is Pluto, now classified as a dwarf
planet or plutoid.

MERCURY: is the planet closest to the Sun.

It is not, however, very close, since it is 36

million miles, or 58 million kilometers away from the Sun! The distances of planets from each
other and from the Sun are often measured in Astronomical Units, AU. One AU is the
average distance between the Earth and the Sun, 93 million miles, or 150 million kilometers.
Using this system of measurement, Mercury is 0.39 AU from the Sun. Like all the other
planets Mercury orbits round the Sun, but its orbit of the Sun lasts for only 88 days. The
Earths orbit lasts for 365 days and Plutos orbit takes 249 YEARS!

VENUS: 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. The word planet is from the
ancient Greek word , planets, which means a wanderer, because they move
through the stars, which seem to be fixed in the sky. This movement is because the planets
are all orbiting around the sun. 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!

EARTH:

The Earth is unlike every other planet in the Solar System in a number of

different ways.It is the only planet that has an atmosphere containing 21 percent oxygen.It is
the only planet that has liquid water on its surface. It is the only planet in the solar system
that has life.The Earth is the only inner planet (Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars) to have one
large satellite, the Moon. Mars has two very tiny moons. Mercury and Venus have none.The
Earth is fragile. Its surface is split into plates (tectonic plates) which float on a rocky mantle
the layer between the surface of the earth, its crust, and its hot liquid core. The inside of
the Earth is active and earthquakes, volcanoes and mountain building takes place along the
boundaries of the tectonic plates.

MARS:

It is easy to forget that Earth is not the only planet in the solar system. Seven (or

eight if you include Pluto) other planets whiz around the sun just like ours. Of those planets,
none of them are closer or more engaging to the imagination than Mars.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 not much farther from the Sun than
Earth. As a result, a typical year on Mars is 1 year and 320 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.

JUPITER: 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 kilometers
from the Sun. Figure 1 shows the planets in order but the distances are not to scale. 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 kilometers (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.

SATURN: Saturn is the sixth planet in the Solar system and, when seen through a
telescope, by far the most beautiful. The bright globe of Saturn is surrounded by rings which
may be composed of ice. Three of these rings are visible from the Earth using a telescope.
Photographs sent back from the US Voyager spacecraft in the 1980s were able to identify
further narrower rings ringlets in between the three main rings. The main rings are
labelled A, B and C, with A the outermost ring. Recently more rings have been found.

URANUS: Uranus cannot be seen from the Earth without a telescope. The seventh planet
from the Sun, it was not known in ancient times, unlike the planets from Mercury to Saturn.
Uranus was first seen by William Herschel in 1781 during a survey of the sky using a
telescope. In 1782 George III appointed Herschel as Astronomer Royal. William Herschel was
born in Hanover, Germany. He moved to England in 1757 in order to follow a career as a
musician but after buying a book on astronomy he became interested only in watching the
sky. Herschel also discovered 2 of Uranus moons with a larger telescope.

NEPTUNE:

The discovery of the planet Neptune was one of the most exciting

discoveries in astronomy. Neptune cannot be seen without a large telescope and was first
seen in 1846 from the observatory in Berlin. BUT, the existence of Neptune had actually
been discovered a year earlier, in 1845.Neptune is the 8th planet from the Sun. Uranus,
the 7th planet, was first discovered by means of a telescope in 1781. Two astronomers
(scientists who study the stars and planets), J.C.Adams in England and Urbain Le Verrier in
France, had been puzzled by the shape of Uranus orbit.

PLUTO: Pluto was first seen by use of a telescope in 1930.

Like Uranus and Neptune,

Pluto can not be seen by the naked eye and its existence was not known to the ancient
world. In 1930 the discovery of Pluto by Clyde Tombaugh in the Lowell Observatory was

heralded as the discovery of the ninth planet. Even in 1930, however, many astronomers
did not agree that a ninth planet had been discovered. In 2005 another possible planet, Eris,
was found beyond Neptune, the eighth planet and since then 2 further small planet-like
bodies have been discovered. These bodies are unlike the other planets in the Solar system.
The first eight planets orbit the Sun in a path which they have cleared of other objects.
Pluto, however, orbits the sun in a zone which is full of other objects that often pass between
Pluto and the Sun. The first eight planets orbit the Sun while keeping the same distance from
the Sun. The Earth is always 93 million miles, one Astronomical Unit, from the Sun. Pluto,
however, orbits in an ellipse, an oval shape which means its distance from the Sun varies.

THE END

THAT,S ALL ABOUT SOLAR SYSTEM, PLANETS, BLACKHOLES AND GRAVITY

THANKS

FROM: ABSAR, USAMA, AND AWAIS.