10 Fascinating Facts About The Solar System

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27 February 2025

Our Solar System is a vast and wondrous place, comprising 8 planets, dwarf planets, asteroids, comets, and other celestial bodies. Here are some interesting facts:

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1. While we perceive the Sun as yellow, its actual colour is white. This is because our atmosphere scatters the shorter, blue wavelengths of light, giving it a yellowish hue

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2. With surface temperatures reaching up to 462°C, Venus is the hottest planet in the Solar System. This is due to a runaway greenhouse effect caused by its thick atmosphere

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3. Olympus Mons on Mars is the largest volcano in the Solar System, standing at an impressive 27 km high. It's roughly three times the height of Mount Everest

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4. Jupiter is the largest planet with a diameter of approximately 142,984 km. It's so massive that it's more than 2.5 times the mass of all other planets combined

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5. Saturn's famous rings are primarily composed of billions of pieces of ice and rock, some as small as grains of sand, others as large as mountains

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6. Unlike most planets, which rotate relatively straight up and down, Uranus spins on its side. This unusual tilt leads to extreme seasons on the planet

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7. Neptune holds the record for the strongest winds in the Solar System, with gusts reaching up to 2,100 km/h. That's much faster than any hurricane or tornado on Earth

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8. Despite being reclassified as a dwarf planet, Pluto still has a fascinating system of five known moons: Charon, Nix, Hydra, Kerberos, and Styx

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9. Mars has seasons just like Earth, although they last about twice as long because a Martian year is almost twice as long as an Earth year

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10. The planets in our Solar System are slowly moving away from the Sun due to the Sun's gradual loss of mass. This process has been ongoing for billions of years

Image: Unsplash

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