Category Kids Queries

Four the planets in the Solar System have rings. They are the four giant gas planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Saturn, which has by far the largest ring system, was known to have rings for a long time. It was not until the 1970s that rings were discovered around the other gas planets. The rings around Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune are much smaller, darker, and fainter than the rings of Saturn. Rings around gas giants are thought to be transient over the lifetime of the planetary system. That is, if we had lived at a very different time, perhaps we would not see big rings around Saturn, but another one of the gas giants.

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Rusting iron minerals in the rocks and soil blow into the air – occasionally in planetwide dust storms – giving the atmosphere a rusty tint.

The iron within the dust reacted with oxygen, producing a red rust colour, while the sky appears red as storms carried the dust into the atmosphere. This dusty surface, which is between a few millimeters and two metres deep, sits above hardened lava composed mostly of basalt. The concentration of iron in this basalt is much higher than that on Earth, contributing to the red appearance of Mars.

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Jupiter’s rapid spin, its hurricane-force winds, and the chemical composition of its atmosphere create colorful cloud bands that encircle the planet. One of these bands contains a hurricane large enough to span three Earths. This Great Red Spot has been raging for centuries.

The Great Red Spot is a giant, spinning storm in Jupiter’s atmosphere. Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is more than twice the size of Earth! Winds inside this storm reach speeds of about 270 miles per hour. Nobody knows when the Great Red Spot first appeared on Jupiter, but it has been seen on Jupiter ever since people started looking through telescopes about 400 years ago.

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This tiny planet – the smallest in the solar system – is only slightly larger than our moon (and its surface is the spitting image of our moon’s too), so its gravity is too weak to grip a heat-trapping atmosphere.

Because Mercury has no atmosphere, it can’t hold onto its heat very well. The night side of Mercury gets very cold, which brings down the average temperature of the planet and makes it only the second hottest planet in the Solar System after Venus.

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The average temperature here is more than six times hotter the hottest spot on earth, making the Venus the most scorching planet in the solar system. It’s enough here to turn a slab of lead into a molten puddle. Sunset won’t bring relief from the heat either. Day or night, from its north pole to its south pole, every day of the year, Venus is locked in a never-ending heat wave. Blame the blanketing atmosphere of carbon dioxide, which is thick enough at the surface to crush a submarine!

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A planet’s makeup depends largely on its place in the solar system. The four ‘’inner planets’’ formed from the debris that orbited closer to the sun. The ‘’outer planets’’ developed well beyond the orbit of Mars from gases and ice. The eight planets (and numerous dwarf planets) in our solar system come in three flavors…

Terrestrial planets: These smaller inner planets – which include Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars  – are made of solid matter: rocks and metals.

Gas giants: Jupiter and Saturn are titanic balls of hydrogen and helium. Some astronomers consider them failed stars.

Ice giants: The far-flung worlds of Uranus and Neptune are gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn, but astronomers also call them ice giants because their atmosphere is composed mostly of ‘’icy’’ water, ammonia, and methane.

Picture Credit : Google