Solar System!

A Kids Book About the Solar

System - Fun Facts & Pictures About Space,
Planets & More
Alexander G. Michaels
Table of Contents

The Origin of the Solar System

What's It Made Of?
Inner Solar System
Mercury
Venus
Earth
Mars
Outer Solar System
Jupiter
Saturn
Uranus
Neptune
Pluto
Moons and Things
Comets
How Far Are They?
Into the Future
Author's Thoughts
 The Origin of the Solar System

The Sun is the heart of our Solar System. All of bodies in the Solar System including planets,
comets and asteroids revolve around it. The Solar System is made up of the Sun and eight planets and
their moons. When we gaze up at the sky at night we see many moving points of lights that move
among the stars. These “wandering stars” are planets.
 Our solar system began 4.6 billion years ago. Scientists believe that the solar system was formed
when a cloud of dust and gas was disturbed perhaps by a supernova or the explosion of a nearby star.
The explosion caused waves in space, which squeezed clouds of dust and gas. Gravity pulled the gas
and dust together causing the cloud to collapse into a solar nebula. The cloud spun and got denser and
hotter in the center. A disk of dust and gas surrounding it was cool around the edges but hot in the
center. As the disk got thinner and thinner, particles and clumps stuck together to form planets or
moons. Planets like Earth, made of rocky material, formed near the center of the cloud. Planets like
Jupiter formed near the outer regions where icy matter settled. The center got so hot that it turned into
a star, the Sun!

It took millions of years for the planets to form. Each planet was the result of varying collisions of
balls of ice and rock. The formations that never got big enough to turn into planets became asteroids.
The biggest part of our solar system is the Sun followed by Jupiter.
The four planets closest to the sun are called terrestrial planets because they have rocky surfaces.
Mars, Earth, Venus and Mercury are called the terrestrial planets. They are made of metal and rock.
The four large planets beyond Mars are called gas giants. Saturn and Jupiter are the largest two
planets and are composed of helium and hydrogen.
The two furthest planets are Uranus and Neptune. They are known as “ice giants” because they are
composed of ices like ammonia, water, and methane.
The Solar System also has smaller objects like dwarf planets, comets and interplanetary dust!
Our Solar System is part of the Milky Way galaxy, which contains 200 billion stars.
Majestic Milky Way Galaxy
 What's It Made Of?

The Sun is the principal component of the Solar System. The Sun is also called a G-Type Main-
Sequence Star! Each second, it converts approximately 600 million tons of hydrogen to helium. The
Sun contains 99.86% of our system’s mass and is composed primarily of hydrogen and helium. Jupiter
and Saturn comprise nearly all of the remaining matter in our solar system and are also made of
hydrogen and helium.
The objects of the inner Solar System are composed mostly of rock such as iron and nickel. Jupiter
and Saturn are composed mainly of gases such as hydrogen, helium and neon. Ices like water,
ammonia, methane, hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide are also found in various places in the Solar
System. Icy substances comprise the majority of the satellites of the giant planets as well as most of
our ice giants, Neptune and Uranus.

A gas giant planet with a system of planetary rings and shepherd moons.
 Inner Solar System

Mercury

Mercury is the smallest planet and the closest to our Sun in our Solar System. It is heavily cratered
and looks very similar to the moon! Craters were created when comets and asteroids bombed
Mercury during its formation. Mercury also has gentle, rolling plains and cliffs. Mercury either
freezes or bakes, depending on which side is lit by the Sun! Temperatures can reach 950 degrees F
(510 degrees C). The dark side can be as cold as minus 346 degrees F (minus 210 degrees C).

Mercury
Venus

Venus is the second planet from the Sun. Earth and Venus are often called twins because they are
similar in mass, density, size, gravity and composition. Venus is the hottest world in the Solar System.
Temperatures on Venus reach 800 degrees F (465 degrees C), which is hot enough to melt lead! Venus
is dry because of the intense heat. About two-thirds of the surfaces are plains with thousands of
volcanoes covering the surface.
Venus

Earth

Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the fifth largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It
was formed approximately 4.54 billion years ago. Earth is an ocean planet and is the only planet that
has liquid water on its surface. Our abundance of water and life make it unique in our Solar System. It
is the only planet known to possess life! Earth is home to 8.7 million species of life including
humans! It is the only planet that has an atmosphere containing 21% oxygen. Earth is the only inner
planet to have one large satellite, the Moon.

Glowing Earth surrounded by nebula. Elements furnished by NASA

Mars

Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and is the second smallest in the Solar System. Mars is red
because it is rusty. There’s lots of iron in the soil and Mar's air causes it to turn red like rusty iron on
Earth. With a diameter a little over half of Earth, it is the only planet smaller than Mercury. The poles
of Mars are covered in ice like on Earth. Mars is the only planet whose surface can be seen in great
detail from Earth.
Mars
 Outer Solar System

The Outer Solar System is home the gas giants and their moons. This region is further from the Sun
and contains objects made of methane, water and ammonia. The four outer planets make up 99% of
the mass orbiting the Sun.

Jupiter

Jupiter is the largest of all planets in the Solar System combined. It protects Earth by steering
comets towards the sun or pushing them to the outer edges of the Solar System or beyond. Jupiter has
dozens of moons orbiting. Its atmosphere resembles the sun and is made up mostly of helium and
hydrogen. Do you know that Jupiter is so big that it could hold more than 1,300 Earths?

Jupiter

Saturn
 Saturn is the second largest planet and is big enough to hold 760 Earths! It’s a gas giant made up of
hydrogen and helium. Saturn is known for its extraordinary rings that span up to more than 200 times
its diameter! Saturn’s rings are made up mostly of chunks of dirty ice, particles ranging from small
grains to huge boulders even as big as a house! Saturn has at least 62 moons. The largest moon, Titan,
is larger than Mercury. Life found on Earth could not live on Saturn and most scientists believe that
there is no form of life existing on Saturn.

Saturn

Uranus

Uranus is the seventh planet from the sun and third largest in diameter. It is blue-green in color
because of the methane gas in its hydrogen-helium atmosphere. It’s known as an ice giant since more
than 80 percent of its mass is made up of water, methane and ammonia ices. Uranus has two sets of
rings. One system has mostly narrow dark rings while the outer system has a red and blue ring. Uranus
is known for its unusual tilt where it basically orbits the sun on its side!

Uranus

Neptune

Neptune is the eighth planet from the Sun and is the third largest planet in our Solar System.
Neptune is cold, dark and has whipping supersonic winds. Neptune is one of four gas giants like
Uranus, Saturn and Jupiter. It is composed mostly of gas. It’s a great ball of helium and hydrogen. It
has 13 moons. The largest moon, Triton, is about the same size as our moon. Neptune has three main
and unusual rings with bright clumps of dust.
 Neptune

Pluto

Pluto was once considered a major planet but was reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006. It is
located in the Kuiper Belt, a shadowy zone populated by a trillion or more comets. Pluto is one of the
coldest places in the Solar System at minus 375 degrees F (minus 225 degrees C). With little gravity,
a ten-foot basketball dunk becomes a 150-foot Pluto dunk!
 Moons and Things

Moons are natural satellites that orbit around various planets in the solar system. There are 140
known moons. Moons can be large like our moon or even small pieces of debris. Some of these
moons are larger than the planet Mercury.
Earth’s Moon is special because it is the only object in the solar system where humans have
journeyed. While the Moon is a satellite of Earth, the Moon is bigger than Pluto. Scientists believe
that the Moon was formed when a giant impact knocked off about 10 percent of the Earth’s mass. The
Moon is rocky and pockmarked with craters formed by asteroids millions of years ago. Temperatures
reach 273 degrees F (134 degrees C) on the sunny side of the Moon and as low as minus 243 degrees
F (minus 152 degrees C) on the dark side of the Moon.

View of the universe from the Moon’s surface

Most of the planets also have magnetic fields. These fields extend into space and form a
magnetosphere around each planet. They rotate around the planet and take charged particles with
them. The Sun has a huge magnetic field that covers our entire solar system.
 Comets

Comets are among the most rare and brilliant bodies in the night sky. They are made out of dust
and ice and can be thought of as a dirty snowball!
Comets come from the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud. A comet will spend billions of years there.
Once in awhile two comets will come close to one another or crash causing a change in direction. On
these rare occasions, the comet will streak into the Inner Solar System. When they enter the warmer
Inner Solar System they begin to shine. They begin to melt and leave magnificent tails. After
thousands and thousands of years they melt down to ice and dust.

Comet
 How Far Are They?

The Sun is our key to life on Earth, yet it is so very far away. On an average the Sun is
approximately 93 million miles or 150 million kilometers away from Earth. The number is average
because the Earth follows an elliptical path around the Sun. Sometimes it’s closer and sometimes it’s
further away.

Sun in space
Astronomers use the average distance from the Sun to the Earth as a standard measuring tool for
calculating distances in the Solar System. 1 astronomical unit or AU is the average distance from the
Earth to the Sun. Jupiter is 5.2 AU from the Sun. Neptune is 30.07 AU from the Sun. To measure
longer distances, astronomers use light-years, or the distance that light travels in a single Earth year,
which is equal to 63,239 AU.
The distance to the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, is about 250,000 AU. It is 4.2 light years away.
In theory, nothing can travel faster than the speed of light or 670,616,629 mph. At that speed you
could go around the earth 7. 5 times in one second!

Star
 Into the Future

The Solar System is so vast that we probably know only a portion of what really exists. Scientists
have just discovered an alien world that is just 300 light-years from Earth. The planet is dubbed HD
95086 b and is really huge. It’s four to five times the size of Jupiter. They estimate that the planet is
burning hot with surface temperatures of about 1,300 degrees F. It has a host star that is 10-17 million
years old and is bigger than our Sun. It’s surrounded by a disc of dust and gas. Who knows what other
planets could lurk here and elsewhere in our Solar System?
The future is boundless as scientists and astronomers continue to explore our Solar System.
 Author's Thoughts

The Solar System! A Kids Book About the Solar System – Fun Facts & Pictures About Space,
Planets & More is the first book in a series of children’s books to help them to enjoy learning about
earth, space and beyond.
I hope you enjoyed this fun book about the Solar System! If you could please provide me a review
of this book I would be grateful. Click here to provide a review.
If you like learning about planets, you may be interested in my new book Planet Earth! A Kids
Book About Planet Earth - Fun Facts & Pictures About Our Oceans, Mountains, Rivers, Deserts,
Endangered Species & More
If you enjoy my work, please feel free to join my mailing list at:
http://www.ebookskids.net
Best wishes in all you do!
Alexander G. Michaels
Ebook Kids Space Series
Planet Earth! A Kids Book About Planet Earth - Fun Facts & Pictures About Our Oceans,
Mountains, Rivers, Deserts, Endangered Species & More

Ebook Kids Nature Series

Endangered Species! A Kids Book About 50 of the Most Endangered Animals on Planet Earth -
Fun Facts & Pictures of Bears, Sharks, Tigers, Birds & More
 Dinosaurs! A Kids Book About Dinosaurs - Fun Facts & Amazing Pictures about Tyrannosaurus
Rex, Triceratops, Stegosaurus, Prehistoric Animals & More

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