INSTRUMENTAL
The Sun is the center of our Solar System.
As a giant ball of plasma it's pretty hard to miss him.
In its 30 million degree center, you would see,
Hydrogen fuse into helium and release energy.
Magnetic fields cause solar flares and nal Mass Ejections,
And particles from these bursts damage electronic connections.
It's 100 times as wide as Earth, and 93 million miles far.
And despite all of this it's just an averaged-sized star.
Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars
They're the first four planets, rocky like ours.
Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune
They're made of hydrogen and helium gas, like a balloon!
Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun,
And as such takes the least time to run
Around its orbit, its year is only 88 earth days,
And the solar wind mean that little gas stays
On its rocky surface, barren and full of craters,
With no atmosphere its temperature waivers
From 800 fahrenheit to minus 300 at night
But there is still some ice in craters away from light.
Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars
They're the first four planets, rocky like ours.
Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune
They're made of hydrogen and helium gas, like a balloon!
Venus is the second planet from the sun,
It's the same size as earth ... give or take some.
Venus is covered in a thick layer of clouds
Made of carbon dioxide which in effect shrouds
The planet from losing heat like a giant blanket
So its 900 degrees due to the greenhouse effect.
It's covered with volcanoes, and is shaped by their powers
And the only probes that have ever landed died within 2 hours.
Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars
They're the first four planets, rocky like ours.
Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune
They're made of hydrogen and helium gas, like a balloon!
The Earth is the third planet from the Sun
... I gotta feeling you're familiar with this one.
It's the only planet known to have had life in its history.
Though just how life started is still a bit of a mystery.
4 Billion years ago two protoplanets collided.
And our moon was formed when collision debris united.
Earth's in the Goldilocks zone, not too hot nor too cold
For liquid water to exists and life as we know it to take hold
Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars
They're the first four planets, rocky like ours.
Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune
They're made of hydrogen and helium gas, like a balloon!
Mars is the fourth planet from the sun.
And it's the place where our voyage to other planets has begun.
Its surface is covered with red iron oxide.
And much of its atmosphere was blown away with no magnetic field inside.
Early astronomers saw canals everywhere.
And they thought perhaps aliens had put them there.
Thanks to Telescopes, Orbiters and Rovers we now know
That there are no such alien canals, although
Rivers, deltas, volcanoes and canyons abound
There's little water left, but life on Mars may still be found.
So we send spacecraft there, like Curiosity
To try and understand Mars' geologic history.
Between the inner planets and outer planets there are
Billions of asteroids orbiting in a belt around our star.
Sometimes they are knocked out of their stable orbit
And a few might collide with earth if they don't avoid it.
Why's the belt? Well it has to do with Jupiter, you see.
It pulls on the belt with its massive gravity
Preventing asteroids from forming into another planet.
But don't worry, a big one can't hit earth soon, or can it?
Jupiter is the fifth planet it's the largest one.
Bigger than all the others combined, but only one thousandth the sun
It's a gas giant, so it has no ground on which to stand.
But that doesn't mean its surface is bland.
The great red spot is a giant cyclone on its surface
It's centuries old and huge, bigger than the earth is.
There are four moons that with binoculars you can see.
Discovered in 1610 by Galileo Galilei.
Io has volcanoes, heated through the friction of its tide,
And Europa's covered in ice, with an ocean inside.
Ganymede is the largest moon we know exists
And Callisto's covered in craters from the asteroids it hits.
Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars
They're the first four planets, rocky like ours.
Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune
They're made of hydrogen and helium gas, like a balloon!
Saturn is the sixth planet from the sun.
In terms of beauty, I'd say its rings have clearly won.
They're made of bits of ice and rock orbiting through the void.
And they may have been formed when a moon was destroyed.
Saturn is the least dense of any planet known
And the most oblate: its centrifugal force is really shown.
Titan has methane lakes, and a thick orange haze.
And Enceladus, has water in liquid phase.
Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars
They're the first four planets, rocky like ours.
Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune
They're made of hydrogen and helium gas, like a balloon!
Uranus is the seventh planet from the sun,
And dirty jokes about its name, are deserving of shun.
Not much is known about Uranus or its brother Neptune
Cause voyager 2 was the only craft to go to them
Uranus has a ring system, though not as great as Saturn's.
And it's usually devoid of any interesting patterns.
There's not much more about this place which I can say.
But hopefully we'll send a new spacecraft someday.
Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars
They're the first four planets, rocky like ours.
Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune
They're made of hydrogen and helium gas, like a balloon!
Neptune is the eighth and final planet from our star.
The Sun's .1% as bright because it is so far.
It's similar to Uranus in Mass, Size and Composition.
And Uranus' orbit predicted its position
You might have noticed Neptune is a bright blue
The methane it it's atmosphere that gives Neptune its hue.
It's the windiest with 1000 mile-per-hour gusts
And triton has liquid nitrogen spewing from its crust.
Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars
They're the first four planets, rocky like ours.
Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune
They're made of hydrogen and helium gas, like a balloon!
The ninth planet was Pluto, but it's a planet no more
Because it's too small, it's a dwarf planet, but this topic's sore.
The planets orbit close in a plane, but Pluto does not
And more dwarf planets were found, that's what got this topic hot
Pluto's moon Charon is pluto's little brother
So big that Pluto and Charon orbit one another.
Beyond the kuiper belt is the Oort cloud.
And that's where debris from our star's formation can be found.
Our sun, and the planets, like Earth and Mars,
Are not alone, just look at the stars.
You see, most stars have their own collection of bodies
And that is what the search for Exoplanets studies.
And there are far more stars up there than you can see.
300 Billion in our galaxy.
And there are hundreds of billions of galaxies that we know.
So think about how small you are, down here below.