Category Archives: The Solar System

According to official IAU figures, our Solar System contains one star, eight planets, over a hundred moons, a number of dwarf planets, countless asteroids and comets, and several tens of unmanned spacecraft.  If you want to know more about planets or other members of the Solar System, browse the articles listed below!

The Five Planets

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  The ancients had beautifully dark skies, dusted with thousands of stars of varying brightness. At some point, they noticed that five of these stars were quite different from the rest.  Not only were they conspicuously bright, but they also moved against the background of the sky, while all the rest were fixed in place.  These movements weren’t all at the same speed, and varied over time, so these special stars became known as “Planets“, from the greek word for … Continue reading →

Comets

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Comets have always been special.  In ancient times, the sky was a stately ordered place, with the Sun, Moon, Stars and Planets all moving in their stately and predictable paths.  But every now and then, something strange and new would appear.  It would start as a fuzzy star with a misty trail behind it, growing from week to week until it formed a spectacular arc across the sky before fading away and vanishing.  This was not a part of the … Continue reading →

Saturn

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Saturn is the last of the Classical Planets, those bright wandering stars which our distant ancestors thousands of years ago tried to explain with stories of gods and heroes.  As the most distant of the five, it moves the slowest, shining with a dusty beige light.  The Greeks and Romans recognised it as the leader of the Titans by its stately motion and it’s unassuming appearance. Mythology Saturn was the Roman name for Cronus, who was one of the Titans … Continue reading →

Mars

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Mars is the third of the classic planets. It is not one of the brightest, but it stands out for two reasons: It has a vivid orange-red colour and it makes large retrograde motions in the sky every year and a half. As we watch Mars from night to night, it slowly moves to the East. Every now and then (whenever Earth overtakes Mars in its orbit), Mars stops moving and reverses direction. After about a month, it resumes its normal … Continue reading →

Venus

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As one of the classical planets, Venus has been a familiar sight to humanity ever since we first started looking at the stars. Like Mercury, Venus’s movements are bound to the Sun but the similarities end there. Venus moves more slowly, and wanders further. It also shines extremely brightly – only the Sun and the Moon are brighter than Venus. Venus is easily identified as the Evening or Morning star and often passes near to the Moon, putting on a … Continue reading →