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Helping you enjoy astronomy with articles, info and video and supporting the International Year Of Astronomy 2009.
CURRENT MOON PHASE
Courtesy USNO
Page listing for the category: Planets
Saturn Rings Close Up
Saturn is another “Gas Giant” like Jupiter, although not quite as big.
Nevertheless, Saturn is the second largest planet in the Solar System and is huge compared to Earth.
It has a diameter of around 75,000 miles at the equator (less at the poles, due to its rotation) and is over 700 times greater in volume than Earth. read on..
Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun. It averages about 36 million miles from it.
This figure is very much an average because interestingly, Mercury has a notably elliptical orbit. Its distance from the Sun varies from about 28 million miles at the closest, to about 43 million miles at furthest away. read on..
Venus is the second closest planet to the Sun. It is 67 million miles from the Sun.
Venus’ orbit is almost circular as the eccentricity of the ellipse is very small. Each orbit takes 225 Earth days. read on..
