Some facts about the planets
Planet Distance from the Number of moons Length of year Length of day
Sun in million Kms in Earth time in Earth time
(1 orbit of Sun) (1 rotation)
| Mercury | 58 | 0 | 88 days | 176 days |
| Venus | 108 | 0 | 225 days | 120 days |
| Earth | 150 | 1 | 365 days | 24hrs |
| Mars | 228 | 2 | 687 days | 24h 37 m |
| Jupiter | 778 | 16 | 12 years | 9h 55m |
| Saturn | 1430 | 17 so far | 29 years | 10h 40m |
| Uranus | 2870 | 15 | 84 years | 17h 14m |
| Neptune | 4497 | 8 | 165 years | 16h 03m |
| Pluto | 5900 | 1 | 248 years | 6 days |
So you think you are big?
Our Sun is just one star in the Milky Way, the name of our galaxy. It would take over forty thousand (40,000) years to travel across the Milky Way even if you could travel at the speed of light, which is one hundred and eighty six thousand (186,000) miles every second, or three hundred thousand (300,000) kilometres a second.
If you could travel at the speed of light for a year you would go about 6 million million miles or 10 million million kilometres.
The Milky Way is just one galaxy there are millions of others each with hundreds of thousands of millions of stars.
You might be feeling small by now but one of those stars might be like ours with a planet like ours, so we might not be quite alone….
Hold on tight
The Earth orbits the Sun at about 65,620 miles an hour
