Our solar systemconsists of an average star we call the Sun, the planets Mercury, Venus, Earth,Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. It includes: the satellitesof the planets; numerous comets, asteroids, and meteoroids; and the interpla...

Our solar system consists of an average star we call the Sun, the planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. It includes: the satellites of the planets; numerous comets, asteroids, and meteoroids; and the interplanetary medium.

The Sun is the richest source of electromagnetic energy (mostly in the form of heat and light) in the solar system. The Sun's nearest known stellar neighbour is a red dwarf star called Proxima Centauri, at a distance of 4.3 light years away. The whole solar system, together with the local stars visible on a clear night, orbits the centre of our home galaxy, a spiral disk of 200 billion stars we call the Milky Way.

The Milky Way has two small galaxies orbiting it nearby, which are visible from the southern hemisphere. They are called the Large Magellanic Cloud and the Small Magellanic Cloud. The nearest large galaxy is the Andromeda Galaxy. It is a spiral galaxy like the Milky Way but is 4 times as massive and is 2 million light years away. Our galaxy, one of billions of galaxies known, is travelling through intergalactic space.

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The planets, most of the satellites of the planets and the asteroids revolve around the Sun in the same direction, in nearly circular orbits. When looking down from above the Sun's North Pole, the planets orbit in a counter-clockwise direction. The planets orbit the Sun in or near the same plane, called the ecliptic. Pluto is a special case in that its orbit is the most highly inclined (18 degrees) and the most highly elliptical of all the planets. Because of this, for part of its orbit, Pluto is closer to the Sun than is Neptune. The axis of ...

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The terrestrial planets are the four innermost planets in the solar system, Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. They are called terrestrial because they have a compact, rocky surface like the Earth's. The planets, Venus, Earth, and Mars have significant atmospheres while Mercury has almost none. The diagram on the right shows the approximate distance of the terrestrial planets to the Sun.

Mercury

Mercury is the closest to the sun, and small for a planet (about the size of our moon).

It has no atmosphere and is covered in craters. The side facing the sun is very hot, about 430°C (that is hot enough to melt lead).

Venus

Venus is almost as big as the Earth, but very unpleasant. It is covered in clouds of sulphuric acid, with an atmosphere of Carbon Dioxide at a very high pressure. Because of the CO2 and the greenhouse effect it is even hotter than Mercury.

Earth

From space, Earth is a blue planet with swirls of cloud. It is the only planet with water, oxygen and living things. It is at the right distance from the sun, with the right chemicals, to support life. Other stars may have planets with the same conditions.

Mars

The Red Planet- is a cold desert of red rocks, with huge mountains and canyons. There is no life on Mars that we know of. It has a thin atmosphere of carbon dioxide, and two small moons.

Between Mars and Jupiter there are thousands of rocks, called asteroids which orbit in the asteroid belt.

Jupiter

Jupiter is the cold giant of the planets. It has no solid surface, being mainly liquid hydrogen and helium, surrounded by gases and clouds. The Great Red Spot is a giant storm, three times the size of earth. Some of the 16 moons have volcanoes.

Saturn

Saturn is another “gas giant”, very like Jupiter.

The beautiful rings are not solid; they are made of billions of tiny chunks of ice, held in orbit by the pull of Saturn’s gravity. As well as the rings, Saturn has more than 18 moons.

Uranus

Uranus is another giant planet. It looks pale green, with very faint rings and 15 moons. It was discovered by William Herschel in 1781. It is unusual because its axis is tilted right over, so that it is “lying on its side” as it goes round the sun. Many scientists widely believe that Uranus was knocked over by collision with a planet or asteroid.

Neptune

Neptune is the twin of Uranus. They are both about 4 times the size of earth. Neptune is bluish, due to a thick atmosphere of cold methane.

It has 8 moons, one with volcanoes. The great dark spot is a storm about the size of Earth.

Pluto

Pluto is the smallest of all the planets and was discovered in 1930. We don’t know much about this small dark planet orbiting in a wide elliptical orbit. Most of the time it orbits outside Neptune but between 1979 and 1999 its orbit comes inside the line of Neptune.

In order of size:

Jupiter Saturn Uranus Neptune Earth Venus Mars Mercury Pluto

Peer Reviews

Here's what a star student thought of this essay

pictureperfect

30th of Jul 2012

Quality of writing

The candidate has written most of the essay in a bullet point style as they have used fairly short sentences, this is not a layout I would recommend. At this level of qualification you should be writing scientific information in continual prose, as this is the accepted way to write an essay. Furthermore, there are a few grammatical and spelling errors which you can usually avoid if you carefully check over you work.

Level of analysis

Adding background information into an essay can demonstrate a greater depth of knowledge and help make your essay interesting to read. The candidate has done this, however the way in which they jump between discussion of our Solar system and other stars/galaxies and then back to planets within our Solar system is very confusing. The best way to prevent this is to make sure you give a clear introduction, then provide any background information in your secondary paragraph and then begin discussing your main topic but make sure you don’t go back and forth between pieces of information. Furthermore the information within this essay is simplistic and lacking in detail. You can improve the quality of your work by taking the time to research your topic, this allows you to add additional information into your essay and gives you a chance to broaden your knowledge. Though you must state any resources you use and provide links to webpages that you take information form, you should also give links to any pictures you use in your essay, which the candidate fails to do. On a final note, the candidate has not written a conclusion for this essay therefore when you read this piece of work it comes to an abrupt end. This is something you want to avoid, if you properly conclude you work you can leave the reader with a good impression. A good conclusion summarises your key points with reference to why these are important as this helps to bring everything together.

Response to question

Overall this is fairly basic essay, the information the candidate has discussed relating to each of the planets within our Solar system is very brief and though they have mentioned satellites and comets in their introductory paragraph they have not gone on to discuss these, which is shame. By taking the time to discuss other topics relating to your essay, you demonstrate a greater range of knowledge and illustrate an interest in your subject.

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