Kids Zone
Eight planets go round one star. Give a planet a tap to jump to its card — then see how many quiz questions you can get right.
The planets are not drawn to size or distance — if they were, Neptune would be four streets away.
وَهُوَ الَّذِي خَلَقَ اللَّيْلَ وَالنَّهَارَ وَالشَّمْسَ وَالْقَمَرَ ۖ كُلٌّ فِي فَلَكٍ يَسْبَحُونَ
And He is the One who created the night and the day, the sun and the moon — each one floating along in its own orbit.
Surah Al-Anbiya 21:33
One fun fact each, plus the numbers to go with it.
The Sun is so big that about 1.3 million Earths could fit inside it. It holds 99.8% of everything in the solar system — the eight planets are the leftovers.
Mercury turns so slowly that one sunrise-to-sunrise day lasts about 176 Earth days — twice as long as its whole year. You could have a birthday before lunchtime ended.
Venus is the hottest planet — about 465 °C, hot enough to melt lead — even though Mercury sits closer to the Sun. Its thick clouds trap the heat like a blanket. It also spins backwards.
Ours is the only world we know of with liquid water on the surface and living things on it — and it is almost three quarters ocean. Every sunset you have ever seen happened here.
Mars has Olympus Mons, the tallest volcano we know of, standing about 22 km high — nearly three Mount Everests. The whole planet looks red because its dust is full of rust.
The Great Red Spot is a storm wider than the whole Earth, and it has been spinning for hundreds of years. Jupiter is also the fastest spinner: a day there is under 10 hours.
Saturn is lighter than water for its size. Find a bathtub big enough and the planet would float in it. Its famous rings are mostly lumps of ice, some like grains of sand and some like houses.
Uranus is tipped right over on its side, so it rolls around the Sun like a ball instead of spinning like a top. That gives each pole about 21 years of daylight, then 21 years of night.
Neptune has the fastest winds anywhere in the solar system, near 2,000 km/h. It was also found with a pencil before a telescope: astronomers worked out where it had to be from the way Uranus wobbled.
Five questions. Tap an answer to see if you got it.
Which planet would float if you put it in a big enough bath?
Saturn is less dense than water, so it would bob on the top.
Which planet is the hottest?
Venus wins. Its thick clouds hold the heat in, so it beats Mercury even from further away.
How long does sunlight take to reach us?
About 8 minutes and 20 seconds. The sunlight on your hand left the Sun before you sat down.
Which planet rolls on its side?
Uranus is tipped about 98 degrees, so it rolls along its path round the Sun.
How many planets are in our solar system?
Eight, since Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006.
Answered 0 of 5.
Ready for the real thing? Space Explorer has a live orbit map with the planets where they actually are today, every named moon, and stars and galaxies drawn star by star.
Space ExplorerBuild the solar system on the kitchen table.
That empty space is most of what the solar system actually is.