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Uranus is the early Greek deity of the Heavens, the earliest supreme god. Uranus was the son and mate of Gaia the father of Cronus and of the Cyclopes and Titans.

Uranus is the first planet to be discovered in the modern times. It was discovered by William Herschel while analytically searching the sky with his telescope on March 13, 1781. It had actually been seen many times before but ignored as simply another star. Herschel named it “the Georgium Sidus” in honor of his patron, the infamous King George III of England; others called it “Herschel”. The name “Uranus” was first proposed by Bode in accord with the other planetary names from classical mythology but didn’t come into common use until 1850.

• Uranus moves around the Sun on its side. The South Pole of Uranus is pointed towards Earth. The angle of the slope of the axis of Uranus is 97 degrees.

• Uranus is a planet with a dull and featureless, pale blue surface.

• Uranus’ pale blue color is caused by the methane in its atmosphere which sifts out red light.

• If we were able to see Uranus’ moons moving around the planet, they would go over and under the planet like lights on a ferris wheel.

• Uranus has rings of ice and small rock particles which are so pale that they appear as black as charcoal.

• Uranus has 15 moons moving around the planet. Ten of these were discovered in 1986 by the Voyager 2 mission.

• A year on Uranus would last 84 years.

• A day on Uranus is only a little shorter than a day on Earth, at about 17 hours long.

• Because of Uranus’ unique slope, a night at one of its poles lasts for 21 Earth years, during which it will obtain no light or heat at all from the Sun.

According to the Roman mythology Neptune was the god of the Sea. After the discovery of Uranus, it was observed that its orbit was not as it should be in accordance with Newton’s laws. It was then predicted that another more distant planet must be disturbing Uranus’ orbit.

Neptune was first observed by Galle and d’Arrest on 1846 Sept 23 very near to the spot independently predicted by Adams and Le Verrier from calculations based on the observed positions of Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus.

• Neptune’s moon, Triton, is gradually getting closer to Neptune. Ultimately, it will get so close that it will get torn apart by Neptune’s gravity and possibly form rings more stunning than Saturn’s.

• Like Jupiter’s great red spots, Neptune has dark spots.

• Triton orbits Neptune in the opposite direction to the planet’s rotation.

• It is the only large moon in the Solar System to orbit in the opposite direction.

• Neptune has four pale rings. Some parts of these rings are brighter in areas than others and appear like curve orbiting the planet. Maybe they are still forming.

• Since its discovery in 1846, Neptune has not yet completed a full orbit. In fact, it takes 165 years for the planet to go around the Sun.

• The coldest temperatures measured in the Solar System are -230°c and it has been recorded on Neptune’s moon, Triton.

In Roman mythology, Pluto is the god of the underworld. The planet received this name perhaps because it’s so far from the Sun that it is in eternal darkness.

Pluto was discovered in 1930 by a lucky accident. Calculations which later turned out to be in error had predicted a planet beyond Neptune, based on the motions of Uranus and Neptune. Not knowing of the error, Clyde W. Tombaugh at Lowell Observatory in Arizona did a very careful sky survey which turned up Pluto anyway.

• Of all the planets in the Solar System Pluto is the smallest planet.

• It is smaller than Earth’s Moon, and half the width of Jupiter’s moon, Ganymede.

• Pluto moves around the Sun on a diverse plain than the other 8 planets, going over them and below them.

• Pluto’s orbit is oval, which means that it can come closer to the Sun than Neptune, but then go almost two billion kilometers further away from Neptune’s orbit.

• Pluto has one moon, Charon. This moon is not much smaller than Pluto itself. No other moon is as close to the size of its planet as Charon is to Pluto.

• Pluto’s journey around the Sun takes 248 Earth years. This means that, since its discovery in 1930, it still has 177 years to go until it has made a complete orbit around the Sun.

• Pluto is the only planet in the Solar System which has not been explored by any space probe.

• Pluto is the planet with the lowest pull of gravity in the Solar System. This explains why its moon, Charon, moves around the planet so closely.

• A day on Pluto lasts for 6 days and 9 hours, which mean that it has the second slowest speed of rotation in the Solar System.

• No one knows what Pluto’s atmosphere contains, or even if it has an atmosphere. Any atmosphere is most likely to contain nitrogen.

According to the Roman mythology, Saturn is the god of agriculture. The related Greek god, Cronus, was the son of Uranus and Gaia and the father of Zeus (Jupiter). Saturn is the basis of the English word “Saturday”.

Saturn has been well-known since primitive times. The first person to observe it with a telescope was Galileo; he noted its anomalous form but was puzzled by it. Early annotations of Saturn were convoluted by the fact that the Earth passes through the plane of Saturn’s rings every few years as Saturn moves in its orbit.

A low resolution image of Saturn therefore changes considerably. It was not until 1659 that Christiaan Huygens rightly inferred the geometry of the rings. Saturn’s rings remained unique in the known solar system until 1977 when very faint rings were discovered around Uranus (and shortly thereafter around Jupiter and Neptune).

• In the solar system Saturn has the most number of moons, including Titan, a moon with an ambiance possibly similar to Earth’s billions of years ago.

• Saturn is a faintly smaller version of Jupiter, with alike, but less idiosyncratic, surface patterns.

• The main difference between Saturn and Jupiter is its amazing rings.

• Saturn’s rings are believed to be the particles of an old moon destroyed in a collision about 50 million years ago.

• It is assumed that Saturn’s rings will vanish one day. They will either dissolve into space or get sucked into the planet by its pull of gravity.

• Saturn is twice as far away from the Sun as Jupiter is.

• Saturn is the second biggest planet in the Solar System after Jupiter. It is so huge that Earth could fit into it 755 times.
• A year on Saturn would take almost thirty Earth years.

Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and by far the largest. Jupiter is more than twice as immense as all the other planets combined. And that is approximately 318 times of the Earth. Jupiter is the fourth brightest object in the sky after the Sun, the Moon and Venus at some times Mars is also brighter. Galileo’s discovery, in 1610, of Jupiter’s four large moons Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto was the first discovery of a center of movement not actually centered on the Earth.

Facts

• Jupiter has a fluid metal ocean at its centre, surrounded by thousands of kilometers of hydrogen and helium gas.
• Its famous Red Spot is in reality a great storm that has raged for at least four hundred years.
• Jupiter has a thin set of rings, which is barely visible from Earth.
• This planet is considered as the vacuum cleaner of the Solar System because it sucks in comets, asteroids and meteorites which could be on a collision course for Earth.
• Jupiter takes only 9 hours and 55 minutes to spin on its axis. This means a day on Jupiter is less than 10 hours long. Its fast rotary motion causes the planet to be compressed, being wider at the equator than from North to South.
• Jupiter is the planet with the strongest pull of gravity in the Solar System.
• The only other object in the Solar System with a stronger pull of gravity is the Sun.
• Jupiter’s moon, Ganymede, is the biggest moon in the Solar System.
• Jupiter’s gravity is used to catapult space-craft on deep space missions further away. This is how the Voyager missions of 1975 managed to succeed.

The fossilized remnants of six baby dinosaurs that died in a volcanic mudflow have been found in China. According to researchers the dinosaurs were less than four years old, and most likely formed a “crèche” composed of babies from at least two different clutches.

The Psittacosaurus finding indicates that the animals had started forming social groups much earlier than previously thought. The 120-million-year-old fossils are reported in the journal Palaeontology. Research on the group was led by Dr Paul Barrett, from London’s Natural History Museum.

He said “the specimens are spectacularly well preserved and together offer a unique insight into the behavior of the Psittacosaurus, which sported a parrot-like beak”.

Dr Barrett explained “It was discovered that these animals in fact lived in small groups. Another interesting fact is that not only did these animals live in groups but these groups were made up of individuals from different sets of clutches”.

It is this proof of grouping in Psittacosaurus that persuades Dr Barrett that the dinosaur was an innately social creature. The horns that came later in its flashier descendent, the iconic Triceratops, perhaps evolved for mating rituals rather than as a protection to push away predators such as T. Rex.

The Psittacosaurus herd was dig up from the Yixian Formation in the northeast of the People’s Republic of China. These are the same bases that have produced the famous “feathered dinosaurs”.