The Venus is the second planet from the sun in our solar system. Its diameter is about 12,103.6 km. its mass is about 48,690,000,000,000 tonnes of weight. The average distance from the sun is about 108,208,930 km. Its rotation is about 243.0187 days and its orbit around the sun is about 224.701 days. Average temperature of that planet is about +456.85 degree Celsius. And, this planet had got no moons. In size, mass, density and volume, the Venus is the planet most similar to Earth. Venus rotates backwards, from east to west, so the sun would appear to rise in the east and set in the west. In April 2006, the European Space Agency’s Venus Express spacecraft reached Venus. This planet is named after Venus, the Roman Goddess which is only meant for Love. It is the brightest natural object in the night sky and reaching an apparent magnitude of -4.6.
Leia Mais…Friday, May 22, 2009
Saturday, May 16, 2009
The First Planet
This is the first planet in our solar system and it is nearest planet to the Sun. The diameter of this planet is about 4,880 km. Its mass is about 3,302,000,000,000 tonnes. The average distance from sun is recorded as 57,909,175 km. It can travel around the sun to make its whole year is within 37.969 days to complete. The average temperature ever recorded as +166.86 degree Fahrenheit. There are no moons are available for this planet. Mercury was named after the speedy messenger of the gods because it seemed to move more quickly that the other known planets. In 2004 NASA launched MESSENGER probe, which is due to reach Mercury in 2011. It has the highest eccentricity of all the planets, and it also got the smallest axial tilt. It is brightest when viewed from Earth, which ranges from 2.0 to 5.5 in apparent magnitude. It is not easily seen because its angular separation from the sun is greater and is only 28.3 degree.
Leia Mais…Thursday, May 14, 2009
Constellations
Groups of stars form patterns in the night sky, which are called constellations. There are 88 known constellations. There are 88 known constellations. The Sumerians, a Middle Eastern civilization, probably named them about 5,000 years ago. They called them after the shapes, objects or animals that they thought they looked like, or after mythological characters. The largest is Hydra, the sea serpent, and the smallest is Crux Australis, the Southern Cross. Centaurus, the Centaur, has the most stars that can be seen with the naked eye (a total of 94). Others include Aquila, the Eagle: Draco, the Dragon: Canis Major, the Great Dog; and Orion, the Hunter. Our solar system was formed about 4,500 million. It is made up of the nine planets – Mercury, Venus, Earth, mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto – as well as their moons, comets, and other bodies. These bodies are all orbits around our sun, to which they are attracted by gravity.
Leia Mais…Saturday, May 9, 2009
Travelling at the speed of light
In space, light travels at a speed of 299,792.46 km a second, or 1,079,252,956 km an hour. When we look at even the nearest star, what we are seeing is light that left it more than four years ago. Many stars are so far away that if someone could stand o n one 65 million light years away and look at Earth, they would see light that left at the time the dinosaurs became extinct. And from a distance of 4.7 billion light years they could watch the Earth the sun being formed! A light year measures distance, not time. Distances in space are often described as light years, the distance light travels in a year. For the moon, its light reaches the earth in 1.02 seconds. For the sun its light reaches the earth in 8 minutes 17 seconds. For the furthest planet (Pluto) the light reaches the earth in 5 hours 20 minutes.
Leia Mais…Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Galaxy Facts
Galaxies are groups of billions of stars that are held together by the force of gravity. Most galaxies are either spiral or elliptical, but some are irregular in shape. The best known galaxy is the milky way. The word galaxy itself comes from the Greek word of Milk. This is because before telescopes were powerful enough to prove that they were made up of individual stars, galaxies looked like milky or cloudy areas in the sky. Our relatively small solar system is only one of 100-200 billion stars in the Milky Way Galaxy, which is 100,000 light years in diameter. The sun and all the planets take about 200,000,000 years to complete one orbit around its center. The large Magellanic Cloud, which is visible only in the southern hemisphere, is 170,000 light years from Earth and 39,000 light years in diameter. The central galaxy of the Abell 2029 galaxy cluster was discovered in 1990. It is 1,070 million light years distant and has a diameter of 5.6 million light years, 80 times the diameter of our own galaxy.
Leia Mais…
