planets in the solar system facts
Saturday, July 3rd, 2010
interesting/unusual planet facts?
what are some really interesting and/or unusual facts about the planets in our solar system?
Here are some cool ones:
- Uranus is the only gas giant in the Solar System that has no ‘large’ moon orbiting it.
- Neptune’s largest moon, Triton, orbits in the opposite direction as Neptune’s own rotation. This means that, rather than slowly getting farther away from Neptune over time as the Earth’s moon is getting farther away from the Earth, Triton is actually getting CLOSER to Neptune, and in a few hundred million years will break apart and form a system of rings around Neptune similar to Saturn’s rings.
- Saturn, in the meantime, has a giant hexagonal cloud formation near one of its poles. So far scientists aren’t sure what is causing the hexagon to form (although aliens are not currently high on the list of suspects).
- Mars has the highest mountain in the Solar System, Olympus Mons, which is not only three times higher than Mount Everest, it is also an extinct volcano.
- Mars is also the only rocky planet in the Solar System with more than one moon. Both its moons, Phobos and Deimos, are very small and were probably captured from the asteroid belt.
- Mercury has actually been slowly shrinking over time due to its metallic core cooling and contracting. This has caused the crust to buckle in places as it settled onto the shrinking core, creating enormous cliffs several kilometers high and hundreds of kilometers long. It’s too bad tourists can’t go there for the view just yet; the day side of Mercury reaches several hundred degrees celsius and would roast you in a few minutes.
- Jupiter holds a position as the only planet which has been observed to have a comet collide with it; in 1994, the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 broke up over Jupiter and the pieces crashed into the jovian atmosphere, creating marks even larger than the Great Red Spot.
Astronomy Online Class – Our Solar System – The 8 Planets – Universal Class