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Encylopedia > Astronomy

Planet


Picture of Planet
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A planet is a large object that revolves around a sun or suns. They can either be terrestrial or gas giant in classification. In our own Solar System the planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars and Pluto (although most people think it is just a captured asteroid now, shame!) are terrestrial. They all have solid surfaces. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are gas giants, in other words not solid. Mostly made of Hydrogen and some Helium, gas giants can almost be thought of as failed suns.

It is thought that fusion occurs inside the gas giants as it does in the Sun, however the mass just isn`t great enough to create the type of heat inside as our Sun so there is only a small emission of radiation that we can detect.

Over the last couple of decades we have discovered exo-planets, planets outside our Solar System. So far there are signs that planets could exist around all stars in the Universe and if thought about logically there is no reason why there wouldn`t be. Our planets are only the remnants of the Sun so it is likely that around all other stars there must be other bodies, even if they are just asteroids.

Planet in other languages:-

Cebuano:planeta
Chinese:xíngxīng
行星
French:f planète
German:m planet
Greek:m πλανήτης
Indonesian:planet
Italian:m pianeta
Japanese:wakusei
惑星
Nederlands:c planeet
Norwegian:m planet
Polish:f planeta
Portuguese:m planeta
Spanish:m planeta
Tagalog:planeta
Turkish:gezegen