Outer Space

By Srinika Nekkanti

Jonathan Halling, Author of Weird But True.

This book is dedicated to all the authors who write non-fiction books, and help us fill our head with knowledge.

Thank you ,for writing all those books that help us so much in school!

Laura F. Marsh is the author of National Geographic Readers.

The Planets in our Solar System

pg. 4

Our Galaxy-The Milky Way

pg. 6

The Sun

pg. 7

Stars and Constellations

pg. 9

Asteroid Belts

pg. 11

Meteors

pg.12

Comets

pg. 13

Moons

pg. 14

The Successful Mission to the Moon

pg. 15

The Planets in our Solar System

The eight main planets in our solar system are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.

There are also many smaller planets that not many people know about. Most of them are dwarf planets. Some of them are asteroids that were pulled into an orbit.

minor planets

Before

After

Pluto used to be a main planet. However, in 2006 it was reclassified as a dwarf planet, making it less important.

There are three things that you need to think about when deciding whether a planet is a planet. One, it should orbit a star, in our solar system, the sun. Two, it must be big enough for gravity to force it into a sphere. Three, it has to be big enough, so that it's gravity clears away other objects that are a similar size to it, while it orbits around the sun. Sadly, Pluto does not meet the third need, causing it to have to be reclassified.

Our Galaxy-The Milky Way

There are many galaxies in the universe. Each galaxy is like a new world. There are new solar systems, constellations, stars, etc, to be found in each new galaxy.

The Milky Way

Galaxies are actually just a huge collection of dust, gas, and billions of stars and solar systems. Some galaxies have black holes in the center of them, the Milky Way is an example of one.

There are four types of galaxies: elliptical, spiral, spiral barred and irregular. All four types of galaxies are made up of the same elements, however, they are just placed differently, so that they look different.