Planets: 100 Illustrated Fun Facts

Do you know that?

The nine planets are the most important members of the Sun's System. In order of distance from the Sun, they are: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Plato.

Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars, are small rocky bodies.

Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are giants, made up mainly of gas.

Pluto is tiny ball of rock and ice.

The Sun is nearly ten times bigger across than Jupiter, and it could swallow more than a million Earths.

Earth is bigger than four of the planets - nearby Venus, Mars and Mercury, and tiny distant Pluto.

Jupiter is by far the largest of the planets and has more mass than all the other planets put together.

Jupiter measure nearly 143 000 kilometers across, which is 11 times bigger than Earth.

Even though Jupiter is so big, it takes less than 10 hours for it to spin round once: this means that its surface is spinning round at s speed of 45 000 km an hour. This is 30 times faster than Earth spins.

Once it was thought that Saturn was the only planet that had rings around it because they were the only ones that can be seen through a telescope.

Close-up photographs taken by the Voyager space probes have shown that the other three gas giants - Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune - have rings too, but their rings are much thinner, narrower and darker than Saturn's.

Ancient astronomers could only see five planets in the night sky until 1781. In this year was built a telescope powerful enough to spot Uranus.

Uranus was the first of three "new" planets to be discovered after 1781.

Neptune was discovered in 1846.

Pluto was discovered in 1930.

Saturn is surrounded by a set of bright, shining rings and when you look at the planet though a telescope it is very beautiful.

Saturn is the lightest (last dense) of the planets. It is lighter even than water - if you could place it in a huge bowl of water, it would float.

Pluto travels more than 7000 million kilometers away from the Sun. It takes nearly 248 Earth years to circle the Sun once.

Mercury is the planet closest to the Sun.

Mercury is the fastest-moving planet, whizzing round the Sun in just 88 days.

Being close to the Sun, Mercury gets extremely hot.

As you read this book over and over to your child it won't be long before they are the ones pointing to the picture and telling you what it is. The author Katy Gleit wrote this book for her own two grandchildren Dani and Deia: In "Planets: 100 Illustrated Fun Facts " your children are given a well-selected knowledge along with entertaining information about the planets of our Sun's System. In addition, a set of wonderful pictures show exactly what a planets looks like.