Planets are large celestial bodies that orbit a star, such as the Sun in our solar system. They are massive enough to be rounded by their own gravity, but not massive enough to initiate nuclear fusion like stars. Planets can be divided into two main types:
1. Terrestrial Planets: These are rocky planets with solid surfaces, including Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars. They are smaller, closer to the Sun, and have few or no moons.
2. Gas Giants and Ice Giants: These are larger planets primarily composed of gases or ices. Jupiter and Saturn are gas giants, made mostly of hydrogen and helium. Uranus and Neptune are ice giants, containing more ices like water, ammonia, and methane.
Planets do not produce their own light but reflect the light of their star. In addition to orbiting stars, some planets have moons, rings, and unique surface features like mountains, volcanoes, and canyons.
Here you can see my planetary images, categorized by planet., Just click on the image of the planet to see the corresponding pictures, hope you'll enjoy.
Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a mass more than two and a half times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined, and slightly less than one one-thousandth the mass of the Sun. Jupiter is the third brightest natural object in the Earth's night sky after the Moon and Venus, and it has been observed since prehistoric times. It was named after Jupiter, the chief deity of ancient Roman religion.
Mars is the fourth planet and the furthest terrestrial planet from the Sun. The reddish color of its surface is due to finely grained iron(III) oxide dust in the soil, giving it the nickname "the Red Planet". Mars’s radius is second smallest among the planets in the Solar System at 3,389.5 km (2,106 mi). It has a surface gravity of 3.72 m/s2 (12.2 ft/s2), which is 38% of Earth's gravity. The Martian dichotomy is visible on the surface: on average, the terrain on Mars’s northern hemisphere is flatter and lower than its southern hemisphere. Mars has a thin atmosphere made primarily of carbon dioxide and two irregularly shaped natural satellites: Phobos and Deimos.
Mercury is the first planet from the Sun and the smallest planet in the Solar System. It is a terrestrial planet with a heavily cratered surface due to the planet having no geological activity and an extremely tenuous atmosphere (called an exosphere). Despite being the smallest planet in the Solar System with a mean diameter of 4,880 km (3,030 mi), 38% of that of Earth's, Mercury is dense enough to have roughly the same surface gravity as Mars. Mercury has a dynamic magnetic field with a strength about 1% of that of Earth's and has no natural satellites.
Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second-largest in the Solar System, after Jupiter. It is a gas giant with an average radius of about nine and a half times that of Earth. It has only one-eighth the average density of Earth, but is over 95 times more massive
Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun and is a gaseous cyan ice giant. Most of the planet is made out of water, ammonia, and methane in a supercritical phase of matter, which in astronomy is called 'ice' or volatiles. The planet's atmosphere has a complex layered cloud structure and has the lowest minimum temperature of 49 K (−224 °C; −371 °F) out of all Solar System's planets. It has a marked axial tilt of 97.8° with a retrograde rotation rate of 17 hours. This means that in an 84 Earth years orbital period around the Sun, its poles get around 42 years of continuous sunlight, followed by 42 years of continuous darkness.
Venus is the second planet from the Sun. It is a rocky planet with the densest atmosphere of all the rocky bodies in the Solar System, and the only one with a mass and size that is close to that of its orbital neighbour Earth. Orbiting inferiorly (inside of Earth's orbit), it appears in Earth's sky always close to the Sun, as either a "morning star" or an "evening star". While this is also true for Mercury, Venus appears much more prominently, since it is the third brightest object in Earth's sky after the Moon and the Sun,[20][21] appearing brighter than any other star-like classical planet or any fixed star. With such a prominence in Earth's sky, Venus has historically been a common and important object for humans, in both their cultures and astronomy.
