| A | B |
|---|
| Mercury | smallest, fastest orbiting planet. Looks like the moon |
| Venus | Hottest planet. Clouds of sulfuric acid and a surface that is volcanically very active. Spins clock wise-retrograde. Atmosphere 90X's earths. |
| Earth | Goldilocks planet. Only planet known in our SS to have life and liquid water. |
| Mars | Half the size of earth, red in color. Search for life goes on. Has the largest mt. and canyon in the solar syst. |
| Jupiter | Largest planet. Large red spot. 80% gas. Largest moon in SS orbits this planet. |
| Saturn | Known for its rings. Density less than 1 - would float in water. Has 2nd largest moon Titan. |
| Uranus | Spins on its side 98 degrees, retrograde/CW spin. |
| Neptune | 3rd largest. bluish color from methane atmosphere. Dark spot. Frozen gas planet |
| Dwarf planets | Ceres, Pluto and Eris. Defined as such because of their size and orbital paths. |
| Planet definition | spherical-nearly round object, carves out its own path or neighborhood, orbits the sun. |
| Dwarf definition | Not a satellite of a planet, small, may not carve out it own path or clear the neighborhood of its neighbors. |
| Comet | giant ball of ice orbiting the sun |
| meteor | object made of ice, rock or metal that has entered earth's atmosdphere |
| rings | particles of rock and ice encircling a planet |
| Moons | spherical, planetoid objects orbiting a planet. Jupiter has the most and the largest. (66 and counting) |
| eccentricity | a Keplerian term describing the non-circular orbits (elliptical) planets make around the sun. An amount of ovalness. |
| Star | An extremely hot, sphereical mass of H gas which produces heat and light energy from fusion. |
| Elliptical | Oval Orbits |
| ecliptic | Planets orbit on this imaginary plane in space |
