Take a quick tour of the Solar System, the star system where we live. It's our neighborhood of the Milky Way. Find out what lies between the Sun and the edge of the Oort Cloud. This isn't a new article, but I've just updated it.

Solar System - Tour for Kids

Mercury is close enough to the Sun for lead to melt during the day. Yet there is ice at the poles. Before we had space probes, Mercury was a mystery hidden in the Sun's glare, but all that's changed.

Mercury - 10 Facts for Kids

Would you like to visit another planet? How about Mars or Venus? Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin wants to see astronauts on Mars, but could Venus be a better choice?

Visiting Venus - Facts for Kids

It's the planet most likely to be mistaken for a UFO. It spins backwards on its axis. A year is two days long. It's Venus! Some call it Earth's twin, but it isn't much like home.

Venus - Facts for Kids

It is bright. Our planet is definitely unique and as far as we know, one of a kind.

On the news last night (talking about UFOs) they had a clip of a unidentified flying phenomena. It was taken by a military pilot.

We can see five planets with our unaided eyes. But people often ask how to find them and how to recognize them. Here is a beginner's guide to seeing Mercury and Venus.

Absolute Beginners - Seeing Mercury and Venus

may be for kids but every interesting..... I have a telescope here and I told my daughter to take it home with her so that the kids could go out at night and check out the sky. I share some of your posts with her hoping she will get the boys (husband and 2 sons) interested.

The Moon has no air, no sound, no weather and no liquid water. It even has places that are colder than Pluto. But since gravity is weaker there, you could throw a ball a long way, and the footprint you left might last a hundred thousand years or more.

The Moon - Facts for Kids

We take the Moon for granted, because it's so close to us and easy to see. But it's a beautiful and interesting object as it goes through its monthly changes. Some of its main features are visible without optical aids, but with binoculars, you can see and learn to recognize many more.

Absolute Beginners - Observing the Moon

Earth's moon is “the Moon” because it was the only one humans had ever seen until 1610. That's when Galileo discovered moons orbiting Jupiter. By 1876 astronomers had found moons around all of the outer planets. So why did it take until 1877 for someone to find the moons of our neighbor Mars?

Moons of Mars - Facts for Kids

Three beautiful planets - Mars, Jupiter and Saturn - are all visible to the unaided eye. If you have binoculars or a telescope, you can also see some of the moons and other features. Here's a beginner's guide to the planets which lie beyond Earth.

Absolute Beginners - Seeing Mars and beyond

Mars has no little green men, but it's a fascinating place. It has a mountain three times the height of Everest and a deep valley that dwarfs the Grand Canyon. Although Mars has no liquid water on the surface, if the southern polar icecap melted, it could cover the planet 36 feet deep in water.

Mars - Facts for Kids

Observers used to call them “vermin of the skies”. Asteroids weren't interesting and their streaks ruined sky photos. But no more! They can tell us about the early Solar System. One of them may have finished off the dinosaurs, and more could be coming our way.

Asteroid Facts for Kids

Bode's Law predicted a planet between Mars and Jupiter. The Sky Police were looking for it, but Giuseppe Piazzi found it on New Year's Day 1801. Then someone found another one. And another one. We know of hundreds of thousands of asteroids now. Discover Ceres - planet, asteroid and dwarf planet.

Ceres Facts for Kids

NASA's Dawn mission spent 14 months orbiting the asteroid Vesta. Vesta's an unusual object, too small to be a dwarf planet. Yet it has the Solar System's tallest mountain, and canyons as big as Earth's Grand Canyon. And it may help scientists to understand the early Solar System.

Vesta - Facts for Kids

King of the Roman gods, comet-killer, two and a half times the mass of all the other planets put together, shortest day of any planet in the Solar System. It's Jupiter! Find out more.

Jupiter - Facts for Kids

Jupiter has at least 79 moons. Some of them are only half a mile long, but one is bigger than the planet Mercury. Which moon has hundreds of volcanoes, and which one has a deep ocean under an icy surface? Find out here.

Jupiter's Moons – Facts for Kids

Came across this site: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/...s-treasure-trove-of-cosmic-delights.html

Wow, Angie, thanks for this. What a stunning collection of images.

Jupiter's moon Europa seems to have a large ocean under its icy crust. Never mind Mars or Venus! Many scientists think that Europa would be a good place to look for life.

Europa - Facts for Kids

Saturday is Saturn's day. Saturn, a god of ancient mythology, is the planet with the beautiful rings. For 13 years, the Cassini space mission studied Saturn, its rings and moons. Here are some facts about this fascinating planet.

Saturn - Facts for Kids

Saturn's moon Titan is bigger than the planet Mercury. It's also the only moon with a thick atmosphere. In fact the atmosphere is so smoggy, we can't see the surface. How is Titan like Earth?

Titan - Facts for Kids

Even being the Saturn's second biggest moon doesn't make Rhea very big. We could set three Rheas down on the USA and have room to spare. It whizzes around Saturn so quickly that a month is only four and a half Earth days long. It's so cold there that ice is as hard as rock.

Saturn's Moon Rhea - Facts for Kids

Everybody recognizes Saturn's rings, but that isn't all that circles the planet. There are shepherd moons, a moon with cold volcanoes erupting, a planet-sized moon, and more. And it took nearly two hundred years for the first seven known moons to get named.

Saturn's Moons – Facts for Kids

The Herschels were one of the greatest astronomical families of all time. A partnership of two brothers and a sister built the best telescopes of their time, and with those telescopes mapped the deep sky. They changed the way astronomers understood the heavens.

Herschel Partnership - for Kids

William Herschel became famous when he was the first person to discover a new planet. Among his other discoveries were the Saturnian moons Enceladus and Mimas. He discovered them with the 40-foot telescope he built.

It can be hard to be the son of a famous man. Although his father was the first person in history to discover a planet, John Herschel had his own illustrious career. He was not only an astronomer, but also a brilliant mathematician, a talented artist, musician and poet, and a loving family man.

John Herschel – Facts for Kids

William Herschel discovered two of the moons of Saturn, but John Herschel named the moons of Saturn that were known at the time.

Enceladus is the coldest of Saturn's moons and one of the most interesting. It's covered with ice, but under the ice is a liquid ocean. Scientists wonder if there might be life in that ocean.

Enceladus - Facts for Kids

William Herschel discovered the planet which was named Uranus after the ancient Greek sky god. Although Uranus has at least 27 moons, most of them weren't discovered until at least the twentieth century.

Moons of Uranus - Facts for Kids

This ice giant is twenty times farther from the Sun than we are. It circles the Sun lying on its side, so each half the planet is dark for over twenty years at a time. It's the planet Uranus, discovered in 1781 by William Herschel who named it George.

Uranus - Facts for Kids

Far beyond Uranus is another blue planet, one named for the Roman sea god. It could well have been named for a god of winds as it's the windiest place in the Solar System. And it has a captured moon that was a Kuiper Belt object like Pluto.

Neptune - Facts for Kids

Neptune is the last planet out from the Sun. It has fourteen known moons and they're a mixed bag. One of them – Triton – has over 99% of the total mass of Neptune's moons. Thirteen little moons share what's left. Only two of the moons were discovered before 1981.

Neptune's Moons - Facts for Kids

Amazing how much we know about space. I remember the time when Pluto was the last planet.

Pluto is smaller than our Moon, but it's the biggest known dwarf planet. On the inner edge of the Kuiper Belt, the Sun is so far away it would look like a bright star from there. And Pluto can get so cold that its atmosphere freezes and falls to the ground.

Pluto - Facts for Kids

passed this on for my grandson. I just bought him a Tee Shirt with an astronaut featured on it.