Astronomy for

Favourite Fairy Tales

Curious Kids
By Giles Sparrow

Discovering the
Solar System
 Chapter 3
Discovering The Solar System
The solar system is the region of space dominated by the
Sun and everything within it. This includes not just the eight
planets, their moons and rings, but also countless smaller
objects that orbit among them, such as rocky asteroids and
icy comets.
In this story, we’ll take a close look at the Moon and the
many planets spinning around our Sun, and at how
humankind has used technology to explore these distant
worlds.
 Moon Map
The Moon has two main types of terrain – dark plains called
“seas”, where there few craters and bright “highlands”
covered in craters. The surface has been bombarded with
space rocks throughout its history, which have carved out
craters of all sizes. This bombardment was at its heaviest up
to 3.8 billion years ago. Three billion years ago, changes
inside the Moon caused molten lava to erupt through
cracks in the surface, flooding the largest craters. The lava
set into solid rock to create dark lunar seas.
 Moon phases
The Moon orbits Earth every 27.3 days and turns on its axis
at the exact same time, so that the same side is always
facing Earth. As different amounts of the Earth-facing
surface are lit by the Sun, it goes through a series of phases,
from new Moon to full Moon and back.
Because the Sun’s direction from Earth is also changing, it
actually takes 29.5 days for the Moon to return to the same
phase as the previous month.
 Out of Curiosity
Rock samples brought back by astronauts show that the
Moon’s rocks are similar – but not identical – to Earth’s. The
Moon is also very large compared to the size of Earth itself;
most moons are much smaller than their parent planets.
Most astronomers now think that the Moon formed when a
Mars-sized rogue planet struck Earth about 4.5 billion years
ago. It threw a huge fountain of molten rock into orbit,
where it came together into a new satellite
 The Far Side
Space probe photos show that the far side of the Moon has
far fewer dark seas – this is because most of the volcanic
eruptions happened on the Earth-facing side.
 Investigating the Sun
The Sun is the star at the centre of our solar system – a
huge ball of gas generating energy that provides light and
heat to the planets and other objects in its orbit.
The Sun’s interior is made up of gas that gets denser (more
tightly packed) and hotter toward a core where
temperature can reach 15 million °C (27 million °F). energy
pushing out from the core creates two more distinct
internal layers, before finally escaping into space at the
photosphere, the Sun’s upper layer where its gas becomes
mostly transparent.
 Did you know?
Prominences are loops of cool gas running high above the
surface, created by the Sun’s tangled magnetic field.
Solar flares are bursts of energy released when
prominences collapse.
Sunspots are dark markings on the surface where the
photosphere is cooler.
Gamma rays escaping from the core bounce back and forth
in the foggy radiative layer, taking tens of thousands of
years to move outward.
 At the photosphere, the hot gas releases energy again in
the form of light and heat that escape into space.
At the base of the convective later, the Sun’s gas changes. It
absorbs energy from below as heat, which sends it rising up
like hot air.
In the Sun’s core, hydrogen gas is forced together to make
helium and release energy as gamma rays.
Solar Eclipses
Solar eclipses happen on rare occasions when the Moon
passes across the face of the Sun as seen from Earth.
Partial Eclipse:
The Moon partially blocks the Sun – look for strange-shaped
shadows on the ground.
Annular Eclipse:
The Moon passes right in front of the Sun, but because it’s
at its farthest Earth, a ring of sunlight shines around it.
Total Eclipse:
The Moon blocks light from the photosphere completely.
For a few minutes, much fainter light from the Sun’s outer
atmosphere, or corona, becomes visible.
 Solar Projection
The Sun’s light is so bright that it can easily damager your
eyes, so you should never look at it directly. The best way to
see features on the Sun is by using a telescope or binoculars
(with one o the two large lenses covered by its cap), to
project the Sun’s image onto a cord or paper screen. You
can see the Sun’s shape during a partial eclipse and also
track changing patterns of sunspots.
Professional astronomers use special telescopes that block
nearly all of the Sun’s light and only allow a very small
amount through to reveal surface details. Safety-graded
“eclipse glasses” do a similar job, so you can look at the Sun
during a partial eclipse.
 Out of Curiosity
Astronomers can measure the Sun’s rotation by tracking
how sunspots change their location on its disk. Their results
show that the Sun isn’t solid – at the equator, it spins in
about 25 days, but near the poles it takes around 35.
 Studying the Planets
The five closest planets to Earth are all visible with the
naked eye if you know where to look. Track them from
week to week to study their movements, or use binoculars
or a small telescope to see some of their most interesting
features.
 Inferior Planets
Mercury and Venus both orbit closer to the Sun and Earth –
they are called inferior planets, and their movements are
confined to loops around the Sun. Mercury, the smallest
and innermost planet, is usually lost in its glare. It can only
be spotted for a few days at dawn and spend months in
dark evening or early morning skies, when it often
outshines everything except the Moon.
Venus goes through phases like the moon and looks
different in its various positions as it orbits the sun.
 Planets with Phases
The distance from Earth to Mercury and Venus varies,
depending on how the planets are arranged. At superior
conjunction, they are on the opposite side of the Sun and
Earth, while at inferior conjunction, they are on the near
side and closest to Earth. Both planets go through a cycle of
phases like the Moon, depending on how much of the sunlit
side we can see. Mercury is so small that its phases are hard
to spot, but Venus’ are easily seen through binoculars or a
small telescope – especially when it is a thin crescent.
 Superior planets
Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, are the three naked-eye
“superior” planets, orbiting the Sun farther out than Earth.
This means they can make circles all the way around the
sky, appearing at their biggest and brightest at
“opposition”, when they are directly opposite the Sun and
rise as it sets.
 Features on Mars
Mars can go from big and bright to small and faint, but it’s
easy to find thanks to its orange-red colour. As its brightest,
a telescope can show dark plains on its surface and
gleaming white ice caps at the poles, which change in size
depending on the Martian seasons.
 Jupiter’s Moons and Clouds
Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system and is much
farther away than Mars, so the arrangement of planets
doesn’t affect its brightness as much. Binoculars will show
Jupiter’s four giant moons shifting from side to side of the
bright disk from one night to the next. Even a small
telescope will show some of the dark cloud bands that wrap
around the planet.
 Rings of Saturn
Saturn is small than Jupiter and almost twice as far away. It
looks like a yellowish “star” that takes nearly 30 years to
circle through the zodiac constellations. Binoculars will
show something strange about its shape, but it takes a
telescope to really see the shape of its rings.
The angle of Saturn’s rings to Earth changes through each
orbit. Sometime they are side-on, but every 15 years they
lie edge-on to Earth and nearly disappear from sight
 Fragments of The Solar System
The space between the planets is mostly empty, but there
are plenty of small objects following their own paths
around the Sun. these vary from durst to clouds to space
rocks that pass through Earth’s atmosphere.
 Shooting Stars
Most of the small objects that cross Earth’s path through
space are tiny specks of dust. As they plunge into the thin
gas of the outer atmosphere, they heat them up due top
friction from the air and they burn away in short-lived trails
of light known as shooting stars or meteors.
 Meteor Streams
Meteors enter the atmosphere from different directions all
the time, but sometimes Earth meets a large cloud of dust
on its own path through space, such as that left behind the
orbit of these “meteor streams”, the result is a shower of
shooting stars coming from one direction. They appear to
radiate from a point in the sky.
 Annual Showers
Because Earth crosses some meteor streams at the same
time each year, they can be predicted. Here are some of the
brightest and best known.
Most of these showers take place over several nights on
either side of their peak.
 Name Constellation Peak around Peak meteors
per hour

Quadrantids Bootes January 4 110

Lyrids Lyra April 23 18
Eta Aquariids Aquarius May 6 50
Delta Aquariids Aquarius July 30 25

Perseids Perseus August 12 100

Orionids Orion October 21 25
Leonids Leo November 17 10 (but storms
of thousands
happen about
every 33 years)

Geminids Gemini December 15 150

 Meteorites
On rare occasions, chunks of solid rock fall into Earth’s
atmosphere. These objects can create spectacular fireballs
called bolides, as they fall. Friction with the air can slow
them down, and sometimes they can even survive to hit the
ground. They are then known as meteorites.
Meteorites allow scientists to study fragments of other
worlds in laboratories on Earth. Soe come from the Moon
and some from Mars, but most are chunks of asteroids that
may have changed little since the early days of the solar
system.
 Out of Curiosity
While some meteorites stand out from their surroundings,
others blend in and are hard to tell from Earth rocks. One
way to track down meteorites is to look in places with no
natural rocks, such as ice sheets or deserts; any rocks found
there must have fallen out of the sky.
 Impact Craters
When large meteorites hit the ground, the results can be
spectacular – a shock wave melts both the meteorite and
the rock below, spraying it over the nearby landscape and
forming a bowl-shaped impact crater. On Earth, these
craters are rapidly worn down and disguised, but many
other worlds in the solar system preserve countless impact
craters from their ancient history.
 Dino Extinction
Around 66 million years ago, a 10-km (6 mile) chunk of
space rock struck what is now Mexico. The aftermath of the
impact, including huge tidal waves, wildfires and years of
dark, cold skies around the world, brought an end to the
age of the dinosaurs.
 Explorers on the Moon
The Moon may be the closest world to Earth, but visiting
still requires crossing 400,00 km (250,000 miles) of space,
then surviving hostile conditions on the lunar surface.
 Robot Pioneers
When humans set the goal of reaching the Moon in the
1960s, we’d only ever seen it from a distance. Space probes
(unmanned devices sent to explore space), were launched
to learn more about conditions before a landing could be
planned.
Robot probes included the Lunar Orbiter which mapped the
surface from a distance, the Ranger (right), which sent back
close-up pictures before smashing into the surface, and the
Surveyors which sent back data about surface conditions.
Until the first Surveyor landings, many scientists worried
that the Moon’s surface was a sea of dust that would
swallow up anything that landed on it.
 To The Moon and Back
In order to reach the Moon, engineers at US space agency
NASA came up with an ingenious plan. A giant rocket
launched a three-part spacecraft named Apollo toward the
Moon. One part (the Lunar Module), was designed to land
on the surface, while another (the linked Command and
Service Modules), kept a third astronaut in orbit around the
Moon. All three astronauts travelled home to Earth in the
third part, the Command Module.
 Walking on The Moon
The Apollo Luna Module carried two astronauts to the lunar
surface, while a third remained in the orbiting Command
Module. Astronauts wore spacesuits to shield from the
airless conditions and extreme temperatures, with thick
boots and multiple layers to protect them from sharp moon
rocks. The Apollo II mission was the first to land people on
the moon, but five successful Apollo missions followed. The
last three missions also carried an electric car called the
Lunar Roving Vehicle.
 Lunar Module
The Lunar Module had a crew cabin mounted on a
spiderlike landing section. Rockets in the landing section
fired to steer the module’s descent. When the surface
expedition ended, a separate rocket underneath the crew
cabin fired to blast it free of the landing section and return
it to lunar orbit.
 The Apollo Landings

Name Lunar Landing Landing Expedition

module date site length
Apollo Eagle July 1969 Sea of 21 hours
II Tranquillity
Apollo Intrepid November Ocean of 32 hours
12 1969 Storms
Apollo Antares February Fra Mauro 33 hours
14 1971 region
Apollo Falcon July 1971 Apennine 67 hours
15 mountains
Apollo Orion April 1971 Descartes 71 hours
16 highlands
Apollo Challenger December Taurus- 75 hours
17 1972 Littrow
valley
 To The Moon and Back
In order to reach the Moon, engineers at US space agency
NASA came up with an ingenious plan. A giant rocket
launched a three-part spacecraft named Apollo toward the
Moon. One part (the Lunar Module), was designed to land
on the surface, while another (the linked Command and
Service Modules), kept a third astronaut in orbit around the
Moon. All three astronauts travelled home to Earth in the
third part, the Command Module.