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According to the Roman mythology Mercury is the god of commerce, travel and robbery, the Roman equivalent of the Greek god Hermes, the messenger of the Gods. The planet perhaps received this name because it moves so quickly across the sky.

Mercury has been identified from the time when of the Sumerians. Only one space craft has visited Mercury and that is Mariner 10. It flew by three times in 1973 and 1974. Only 45% of the surface was recorded as it is too close to the Sun to be safely imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope.

• Some astronomers believed that the surface of Mercury would be smooth before pictures were taken of its surface.

• When Mariner 10 took pictures of Mercury during its flyby of Venus and Mercury in November 1973, scientists discovered that Mercury is the most cratered planet in the Solar System with a surface similar to Earth’s Moon.

• Mercury has no atmosphere at all. Sunlight reflects off its surface, similar to how light is reflected directly off the Moon’s surface.

•  The lack of atmosphere means that sunlight cannot be spread through the atmosphere. The planet’s sky is dark, just like the Moon’s.

• A year on Mercury is only 88 days long, but a full day (from sunset to sunrise) takes 176 days, even though the planet takes 59 days to rotate on its axis.

• We can see the Mercury only after the Sun rise and just before the sun sets.

• The sun would appear two and a half times bigger than on earth when seen in Mercury.

• Regardless of the fact that it’s the closest planet to the Sun, Mercury is not the warmest. Venus is warmer. Mercury can be one of the coldest planets in the Solar System

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.