A brief journey
through the universe

Neptune is the furthest planet from the Sun and is the fourth largest. It is a gas giant and has 14 known moons. It is so far from the Sun it takes 164.8 Earth years to make one full orbit around the Sun. Neptune has rings around it but they are very hard to see and some of them are slowly disappearing.

An orbit is the curved path an object takes around a point in space. The path the Earth makes as it goes around the Sun is its orbit and the path the Moon makes around the Earth is its orbit. Most orbits are not perfect circles but rather have elliptical (oval) paths.

Pluto is a Dwarf Planet that is located 40 times further from the Sun than the Earth. It is located in an area known as the Kuiper Belt. It was originally considered the ninth planet until 1992 when we discovered other objects that were similar in size to Pluto in the same region. It takes Pluto 248 years to orbit the Sun!

Quasars are extremely bright areas that surround super massive black holes. They emit so much energy that they are the brightest objects in the universe. Quasars are very far from us (some are over 28 billion light-years away). Scientists have discovered over 200,000 quasars!

Red giants are stars that are close to the end of their evolution. They can become very large. Some red giants are so big they would reach Jupiter if they were in the same location as the Sun. They are typically orange to red in color. In about five or six billion years our Sun will become a red giant and will grow so large it will reach to where the Earth is now!

Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and is the second largest. It is a gas giant like Jupiter, Neptune and Uranus. Saturn is probably best known for it's wonderful planetary rings. Saturn spins so fast that it is like a ball that is being squashed. It is a little flat at the top and bottom and bulges around the middle and has over 60 moons.

A telescope is an instrument that lets us view very distant objects. Many telescopes gather and magnify visible light like we can see with our eyes. Other telescopes look at different types of energy such as infrared, ultraviolet, and X-rays. Telescopes can be very small to as large as a building. Some telescopes are in space orbiting around the Earth.