Mercury

Mercury is the closest planet to the sun and is the eighth largest; with a diameter of 4880 km. Mercury recived its from the greek god Hermes, because it moves so fast through the sky. It has been visited by 2 spacecraft so far; Mariner 10 and MESSENGER, MESSENGER took some highly detailed pictures of Mercury in 2008. Astronomers thought that a planet named Vulcan orbited Mercury and was closer to the sun, but later turned out not to be real. Mercury's discovery was not by one person but many people , the greeks and romans were the one first to discover Mercury; thus its name. Mercury's surface is equivielant to that of earth's moon, and rotates 3 times in two of "its" years. It revolves around the sun about 4 and a half times each earth year. Mercury is also the the hottest planet next to Venus, up to 90,000 to 700,000 degrees. Speaking of Venus let's move on.

Here you can see Mercury's rocky moon like surface.

Venus

Venus is the second planet from the sun, is the sixith largest planet , and is often reffered to as earth's sister planet because of similar charictaristics . Because of its extreme beauty it was given the name Venus

after the Greek god of love and beauty. Venus has been known about since ancient times and was thought to be two seperate bodies( or planets ), but was later discovered to be only one. It is often reffered to the Morning star and evening star because you can see it in the early morning and late afternoon. Venus has a diameter of 12,103.6 km around........WOW THATS LIKE AS BIG AS EARTH, see why they call Venus our sister planet? The surface of Venus is hotter than Mercury but is much more stable, and is at least 740,000 degrees. Venus is also still volcanicly active due to the extreme heat on the surface and has the densest atmosphere from all the other terrestrial planets in the solar system. Venus is the brightest object in the sky besides the moon and the sun and sometimes thought to be a UFO. Venus's atmosphere is abundant with thunderstorms but no rain, because the clouds on Venus are made up of sulfuric acid and carbon dioxide. Venus was once belived to have liquid oceans in the past, but evaporated because of the exterme heat due to a runaway greenhouse effect. Over twenty space vessels have been to Venus, and the coolest thing yet....... Every Venus day is 243 earth days.

The sulfuric acid filled clouds on Venus. Jupiter Jupiter is the fifth planet from the sun and is by far the largest of all the planets. It comes in at a whopping 142,984 km's in diameter, thats 318 times the size of earth! Jupiter gets its name from the Roman god Jupiter, the king of the gods because of its massive size. In greek mythology Jupiter is the son of Cronus or Saturn. Jupiter is the fourth brightest object in the sky next to Venus, the Moon and The Sun, giving it a star like look at night. Jupiter is a gas planet, and gas planets do not have solid surfaces. Their gaseous material simply gets denser in depth. The big red spot you see on Jupiter is called the Great Red Spot which is a massive anticyclonic storm that is bigger then earth.........yes its bigger than the whole earth! The storm may be a permanent feature of this massive planet. In the most popular picture of Jupiter the little black dot you see is the shadow of one of Jupiters 4 moons Europa. Another cool thing is that like Saturn, Jupiter has rings but they cannot be seen by a normal telescope, one must get an uberscope or something to see them; they are that thin! Jupiter takes 11.86 years to orbit the sun, once. Enough about Jupiter lets move

on to its four moons Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto.

The big circular shape you see is the Great Red Storm which is bigger than earth! The Four Galilean Moons We will start off with Io and go down the list. Io is the closest moon to Jupiter and is the third largest of the Galilean moons. Io is slightly larger than earths moon, and is made up mostly of silicate rock. Io also still has active volcanoes on it. Next is Europa which is one of the bodies in the solar system that has a chance of supporting human life. Europa is slightly smaller than earths moon and is also made up of mostly silicate rock. Europa has a thin layer of ice on the surface. The ice on Europa covers possibly a liquid water ocean, being the only other place in the solar system besides earth to possess liquid water. Ganymede is next being the largest of the Galilean moons with a diameter of 5262 km's . Ganymede is the largest moon in the solar system and is bigger than Mercury but is half its mass. Ganymede may also have an outer layer of ice like Io, and Europa. Finally we move on to Callisto which is the outermost of Jupiter's moons, and the second largest. Callisto seems to have little internal structure but is possibly just settled rock. Callisto is made up of about 40% ice and 60% rock/iron, and is covered entierly with disformed old craters. The surface of Callisto is very old like earth's moon and Mars, and the atmosphere is mostly composed of carbon dioxide. Two huge craters on Callisto are called Vallhalla, and Asgard named after places in greek mythology.

The Galilean moon Io.

The icy surface of Europa

Ganymede the largest moon in in the solar system

The crater filled Callisto