Did you know that our star, the Sun, is just one of hundreds of billions of stars swirling within an

enormous cosmic place called the Milky Way Galaxy? The Milky Way is a huge collection of stars, dust
and gas. It’s called a spiral galaxy because if you could view it from the top or bottom, it would look like
a spinning pinwheel. The Sun is located on one of the spiral arms, about 25,000 light-years away from
the center of the galaxy. Even if you could travel at the speed of light (300,000 kilometers, or 186,000
miles, per second), it would take you about 25,000 years to reach the middle of the Milky Way.

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"The milky way" gets its name from a Greek myth about the goddess Hera who sprayed milk across the
sky. In other parts of the world, our galaxy goes by other names. In China it’s called the “Silver River,”
and in the Kalahari Desert in Southern Africa, it’s called the “Backbone of Night.”

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Solar system

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The sun

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The sun lies at the heart of the solar system, where it is by far the largest object. It holds 99.8% of the
solar system's mass and is roughly 109 times the diameter of the Earth — about one million Earths could
fit inside the sun.

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The sun is one of more than 100 billion stars in the Milky Way. It orbits some 25,000 light-years from the
galactic core, completing a revolution once every 250 million years or so. The sun is relatively young,
part of a generation of stars known as Population I, which are relatively rich in elements heavier than
helium. An older generation of stars is called Population II, and an earlier generation of Population III
may have existed, although no members of this generation are known yet.

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Mercury

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Mercury—the smallest planet in our solar system and nearest to the Sun—is only slightly larger than
Earth's Moon. Its surface is covered in tens of thousands of impact craters. From the surface of Mercury,
the Sun would appear more than three times as large as it does when viewed from Earth, and the
sunlight would be as much as 11 times brighter. Despite its proximity to the Sun, Mercury is not the
hottest planet in our solar system— that title belongs to nearby Venus, thanks to its dense atmosphere.
But Mercury is the fastest planet, zipping around the Sun every 88 Earth days. Mercury is appropriately
named for the swiftest of the ancient Roman gods.

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Venus

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Venus is a cloud-swaddled planet named for a love goddess, and often called Earth’s twin. But pull up a
bit closer, and Venus turns hellish. Our nearest planetary neighbor, the second planet from the Sun, has
a surface hot enough to melt lead. The atmosphere is so thick that, from the surface, the Sun is just a
smear of light.

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Earth

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Earth, our home planet, is a world unlike any other. The third planet from the sun, Earth is the only place
in the known universe confirmed to host life. With a radius of 3,959 miles, Earth is the fifth largest
planet in our solar system, and it's the only one known for sure to have liquid water on its surface. Earth
is also unique in terms of monikers. Every other solar system planet was named for a Greek or Roman
deity, but for at least a thousand years, some cultures have described our world using the Germanic
word “earth,” which means simply “the ground.”

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Mars
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Mars is no place for the faint-hearted. It’s dry, rocky, and bitter cold. The fourth planet from the Sun,
Mars is one of Earth's two closest planetary neighbors (Venus is the other). Mars is one of the easiest
planets to spot in the night sky – it looks like a bright red point of light. Despite being inhospitable to
humans, robotic explorers – like NASA's Perseverance rover – are serving as pathfinders to eventually
get humans to the surface of the Red Planet.

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Jupiter

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Jupiter's stripes and swirls are actually cold, windy clouds of ammonia and water, floating in an
atmosphere of hydrogen and helium. Jupiter’s iconic Great Red Spot is a giant storm bigger than Earth
that has raged for hundreds of years. Jupiter is named for the king of the ancient Roman gods.

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Jupiter is the fifth planet from our Sun and is, by far, the largest planet in the solar system – more than
twice as massive as all the other planets combined.

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Eleven Earths could fit across Jupiter’s equator. If Earth were the size of a grape, Jupiter would be the
size of a basketball.

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Saturn

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Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second largest planet in our solar system. Adorned with a
dazzling system of icy rings, Saturn is unique among the planets. It is not the only planet to have rings,
but none are as spectacular or as complex as Saturn's. Like fellow gas giant Jupiter, Saturn is a massive
ball made mostly of hydrogen and helium. The farthest planet from Earth discovered by the unaided
human eye, Saturn has been known since ancient times. The planet is named for the Roman god of
agriculture and wealth, who was also the father of Jupiter.

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Uranus

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Uranus is very cold and windy. It is surrounded by faint rings and more than two dozen small moons as it
rotates at a nearly 90-degree angle from the plane of its orbit. This unique tilt makes Uranus appear to
spin on its side. Uranus is blue-green in color due to large amounts of methane, which absorbs red light
but allows blues to be reflected back into space. The atmosphere is mostly hydrogen and helium, but
also includes large amounts of water, ammonia and methane. Astronomer William Herschel tried
unsuccessfully to name his discovery Georgium Sidus after his patron, English king George III. Instead,
the planet was eventually named for Uranus, the Greek god of the sky, who was also the father of
Kronos (or Saturn in Roman mythology).

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Dark, cold and whipped by supersonic winds, giant Neptune is the eighth and most distant major planet
orbiting our Sun. More than 30 times as far from the Sun as Earth, Neptune is not visible to the naked
eye. In 2011, Neptune completed its first 165-year orbit since its discovery. The planet’s rich blue color
comes from methane in its atmosphere, which absorbs red wavelengths of light but allows blue ones to
be reflected back into space. Neptune was the first planet located through mathematical calculations.
Using predictions sent him by French astronomer Urbain Le Verrier, based on disturbances in the orbit
of Uranus, German asstronomer Johann Galle was first to observe the planet in 1846. The planet is
named after the Roman god of the sea, as suggested by Le Verrier.

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Neptune

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Fun facts!

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Uranus spins sideways

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JUPITER'S MOON IO HAS TOWERING VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS

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MARS BOASTS A VOLCANO BIGGER THAN THE ENTIRE STATE OF HAWAII

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VENUS IS SWEPT BY SUPER-POWERFUL WINDS… THAT SOME HOPE COULD HARBOR LIFE

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JUPITER'S GREAT RED SPOT IS SHRINKING

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SATURN HAS A HEXAGONAL-SHAPED STORM

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Protoplanet hypothesis

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The Protoplanet theory A dense interstellar cloud produces a cluster of stars. Dense regions in the cloud
form and coalesce; as the small blobs have random spins the resulting stars will have low rotation rates.
The planets are smaller blobs captured by the star. The small blobs would have higher rotation than is
seen in the planets of the Solar System, but the theory accounts for this by having the 'planetary blobs'
split into planets and satellites. However, it is not clear how the planets came to be confined to a plane
or why their rotations are in the same sense.

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Encounter hypothesis

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Encounter Hypothesis: One of the earliest theories for the formation of the planets was called the
encounter hypothesis. In this scenario, a rogue star passes close to the Sun about 5 billion years ago.
Material, in the form of hot gas, is tidally stripped from the Sun and the rogue star. This material
fragments into smaller lumps which form the planets. This hypothesis has the advantage of explaining
why the planets all revolve in the same direction (from the encounter geometry) and also provides an
explanation for why the inner worlds are denser than the outer worlds.

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However, there are two major problems for a theory of this type. One is that hot gas expands, not
contracts. So lumps of hot gas would not form planets. The second is that encounters between stars are
extremely rare, so rare as to be improbable in the lifetime of the Universe (15 billion years).

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Nebular hypothesis

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Nebular Hypothesis: A second theory is called the nebular hypothesis. In this theory, the whole Solar
System starts as a large cloud of gas that contracts under self-gravity. Conservation of angular
momentum requires that a rotating disk form with a large concentration at the center (the proto-Sun).
Within the disk, planets form.

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While this theory incorporates more basic physics, there are several unsolved problems. For example, a
majority of the angular momentum in the Solar System is held by the outer planets. For comparison,
99% of the Solar System's mass is in the Sun, but 99% of its angular momentum is in the planets.
Another flaw is the mechanism from which the disk turns into individual planets