01 March, 2011

Solar System...The Family of Sun


The sun is the center of our solar system. It is a ball of very hot gases burning all the time. It provides light and heat to the bodies revolving around it, this it is the sole source of life in solar system.The Sun's temperature on the surface is about 5,537 to 6,093C. That's 100 times hotter than a really hot day on Earth!
The Sun moves through a huge black space, taking many smaller bodies with it. These smaller bodies include planets, asteroids, comets, meteors, and tiny molecules of gases. Together all these form the sun's family that we name as  'solar system'. Many solar systems and stars clustered together make up a galaxy. Our solar system is located in the galaxy known as "Milky Way".
Astronomers have not been still able to find out that how far out our solar system extends. They are of the view that some objects may be as much as 15 trillion kilometers away from the center of solar system, our Sun.

The Sun provides energy to all the bodies located in our solar system including earth. It also provides the heat and light necessary to support all forms of life on our planet. Gravity of our sun keeps the planets, comets, and other bodies in orbit around it.
After the Sun, the planets are the largest and most massive members of the solar system. Some of them are huge but some are pretty small. There are eight known planets in our solar system named as: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.

Not long ago scientists used to think that there were nine planets in our solar system. They thought that Pluto was a planet because it revolves around the Sun. But in 2006 they decided that Pluto should be named as a dwarf planet. Dwarf planets are the minor bodies that also orbit the Sun but are smaller than the planets. Bodies even smaller than dwarf planets are called asteroids, most of which lie between Mars and Jupiter.
Comets are the other bodies in solar system. Some people call name them as stars with huge tails. This is because a comet appears in the sky as a fuzzy spot of light with a huge tail behind it. Comets are, mostly, made up of dust and frozen gases. As a comet moves closer to the Sun, the ice melts and thus appears like a tail. Halley's Comet is probably the most famous of all the comets.

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