26th June is Kids in Museums ‘Digital Takeover Day’. Here at the Armagh Observatory and Planetarium we wanted to give our young followers a chance to be published in our blog. Read all about their favourite planets below. Thank you to everyone who entered!

Mars

My favourite planet is Mars because I like that it is red in colour and it reminds me of the chocolate bar. Mars looks hot because it is red but it is just a rusty planet. My mummy showed me Mars when it was in the night sky and it looked like a star. I can’t wait to see it again and tell all my friends.

Image Credit: NASA

In my room I have planet wallpaper and on it Mars has two moons and they have funny names called Phobos and Deimos. My mummy said it has a really big volcano as well and I love volcanoes. I would really like to see a volcano on Earth someday but not one with lava because it would be very hot.

I would like to be an astronaut and go to space, but I do not want to go to Mars because it is very far away. To go to Mars on a big rocket and walk around it in a spacesuit and then come back home could take three-years and I am five now so would be eight when I come back and I would miss my family.

Senan, age 5.

Saturn

Hi my name is Harper and I’m going to tell about my favourite planet Saturn.                      

Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second largest planet in the solar system.

Adorned with thousands of beautiful ringlets, Saturn is unique among the planets. It is not the only planet to have rings but none are as spectacular and complicated as Saturn’s.

The ringed planet, Saturn. Image Credit: NASA

Like fellow gas giant Jupitar, Saturn is a massive ball made up of hydrogen and helium.         

10 Things you need to know about Saturn

  1. Nine earths side by side would almost span across Saturn’s diameter. That doesn’t include Saturn’s rings.
  2. Saturn is the sixth planet from our Sun and orbits at a distance of about 886 million miles from the Sun.
  3. Saturn takes about 10.07 hours to rotate on its axis once and 29 Earth years to orbit the sun.
  4. Saturn is a gas giant planet and therefore it does not have a solid surface like Earth’s.
  5. Saturn’s atmosphere is made of hydrogen and helium.
  6. Saturn has 29 known moons and 53 unknown moons. That’s eighty two moons!!
  7. Saturn has the most spectacular ring system, with several ring gaps.
  8. Four spacecraft have visited Saturn, they are Pioneer 11, Voyagers 1 & 2 and the Cassini/Huygens mission.
  9. Saturn cannot support life as we know it.
  10. 2 tons of Saturn’s mass is from earth.
Image of Saturn
Sometimes “Wow!” is the only thing to say. Saturn (with an auroral display) and its rings seen by the Hubble Space Telescope (image credit: NASA, ESA, J. Clarke (Boston University), and Z. Levay (STScI))

Bibliography: NASA Science Solar System Exploration & Space Facts.com


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