Geography-VI

[1] The Earth in the Solar System

 Poornima: Full moon night.
 Amavasya: New moon night.
 Celestial bodies: Entities that exist in the sky.
 Stars: Hot & large celestial bodies made up of hot gases. They emit their own heat & light. Eg, Sun.
 Constellation: Patterns formed by different groups of stars. Eg, Saptarishi (a part of the Ursa major).
 Pole star: The star that appears permanently in the northern sky.
 Planets: Celestial bodies without their own light. The world ‘palnetai’ means ‘wanderers’ in Greek.
 Jupitar, Saturn & Uranus have rings around them
 The solar system: The sun, eight planets, satellites & some other celestial bodies know as asteroids &
meteoroids form the solar system. Aka the solar family with the sun as its head. The word ‘Sol’ means sun in
Latin.
 The sun: A huge star made up of extremely hot gases. It provides the pulling forces that binds the solar system.
 Planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupitar, Saturn, Uranus & Neptune. All planets move in elongated parts
called their orbits.
 Inner planets: Very close to the sun. They are made up of rocks.
 Outer Planets: Very-very far from the sun and are huge planets made up of gases and liquids.
 Mercury is the nearest planet to the sun. It takes only about 88 days to complete one round along its orbit.
 Venus is considered earth’s twin because its size & shape are similar to the earth.
 Pluto was declared a drawn planet by the International Astronomical Union in 2006.
 Earth is the third nearest planet to the sun. It’s the fifth largest planet. The shape of earth is geoid. It’s called the
blue planet b/c of abundance of water on its surface.
 Light travels at the speed of about 300,000 km/sec.
 Moon’s diameter is 1/4th of the earth. It’s 3,84,400 km away from us. It takes about 27 days move around the
earth & to complete one spin.
 Neil Armstrong was the first man to step of the moon on 20 July 1969.
 A satellite is a celestial body that moves around the planets in the same way as the planets move around the
sun.
 Asteroids: Tiny bodies that move around the sun. They are found b/w the orbits of Mars & Jupiter.
 Meteoroids: The asteroids that enter earth atmosphere & get burnt up due to friction with air.
 Ancient Indians through the Milky Way to be a river flowing in the sky. Thus, they named it the Akash Ganga.
 A Galaxy is a huge system of billions of stars & clouds of dust & gases.
 Universe is made of billions of such galaxies.
 Planets:
o MERCURY:
 One orbit around sun - 88 days,
 One spin on axis - 59 days.
o VENUS:
 One orbit around sun - 255 days.
 One spin on axis - 243 days
o EARTH:
 One orbit around sun - 365 days.
 One spin on axis - 1 day
 Number of moons – 1
o MARS:
 One orbit around sun - 687 days
 One spin on axis - 1 day, number of moons – 02
o JUPITER:
 One orbit around sun - 11 years, 11 months about 12 years. One spin on axis - 9 hours, 56 minutes,
number of moons - about 53.
o SATURN:
 One orbit around sun - 29 years, 5 months. One spin on axis - 10 hours 40 minutes, number of moons -
about 53.
o URANUS:
 One orbit around sun - 84 years.
 One spin around axis - 17 hours 14 minutes, number of moons - about 27.