Archive for May, 2008

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What is a solar system?

Friday, May 2nd, 2008

With all this talk about stars, planets and moons in previous posts, it’s about high time I mentioned a solar system. A solar system is exactly what the name implies - the system associated with a sun (star). Our own solar system contains 8 planets. We once had nine but the planet Pluto was downgraded […]

What is the biggest planet in our solar system?

Friday, May 2nd, 2008

Mighty Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system with a mass 318 times that of the Earth. In fact, its mass is more than twice that of all the other planets in the solar system combined. Aside from mass, the planet also takes up a lot of space. It is 88,736 miles in […]

There were 9 planets. What happened to Pluto?

Thursday, May 1st, 2008

Poor Pluto. Discovered in 1930 by Cylde W. Tombaugh, Pluto was thought to be the missing planet theorized to exist based on inaccurate calculations. It was added as our ninth planet and actually sparked quite a fan following with its popularity, even inspiring the name of a famous Disney character. For 36 years, humble little […]

How many planets are there in our solar system and what are their names?

Thursday, May 1st, 2008

There’s a lot more to our solar system than the planets. I’ll cover some of the less known objects and phenomenon such as the Oort Cloud, Kuiper Belt and other strange stuff in a future post, but when people think solar system, they usually think of the planets in orbit around the Sun. Our solar […]

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