There's so many questions surrounding abortion & the answers never easy in any of the situations but for some they just don't think about it.

In one magazine I read about a woman who had two abortions & her reasons for it were that "I never took the pill on time!" which is a messed up reason for aborting two innocent lives just cos she couldn't keep her legs closed or take the pills on time.

If a person is going to do that then they should use adequate protection against getting pregnant.

When I read that magazine, I swear I wanted to throttle her, idiot acting like it was no big deal when there are couples out there who can't conceive naturally.

Tis a messed up world.

Aaliyah.

The baby's not even born yet & they're demanding gold? Wtf? For crying out loud they can't demand that just cos you're having a baby, OK, in some families there's a tradition where gold is given out cos of the birth of a child but they should be more realistic & at least alot more considerate to you & your hubby's situation.

Lol, why can't they ask for a suit instead?

Hmmm I do feel for you & your hubby, this is supposed to be a magical time for you both & your families, you don't need their demands to overshadow your happiness.

When was the last time they contacted you & did you make it very clear that what they're asking for right now is not affordable for you both at the moment?

Lollllll Miney, Lollllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll!!

Cathy said:

Joji ...Yer baq in action not election ...
Agher election mein kharay hotay Toh mein dhakka daydetee peechhay se

Lol, you're such a bully, lol!

Kyun mujrim uncle?
Aap kyun nahi chup hote?

Well done.

Marayam.

MAA said:

Sanumayaz/cathy. U r the one who is speaking from ONE point of view, that is YOURS. The sister has no bloody haq unless she is hungry and has no roof over her head. She has no bloody right. Why dont u go back and read my message carefully. Me and my husband do not even have a house of our own, we live in MY parents house. We are saving to buy a house, I dont mind if he sends them monthly kharcha cos he should. Now we are going to have a baby and we have to think millions of times before we go and buy any clothes for our kid because we cannot afford it. My husband's salary is not enough to even buy a house and pay bills. Allah janda how we will be able to do so. I can't work now since the baby is coming.

His sisters should not ask for gold and mobile phones because my husband has not even got a home. My husbands duty is firstly towards me.to give me a house and to provide for me.

When my husband can buy a house, pay his bills and put food in his wife's stomach and his childs then his SELFISH sisters can ask for stuff.

If u r a sister with a brother and sister in same situation as my husband..then I would ask u to please consider what I am saying, peoples marriages are destroyed due to selfish and greedy in-laws.

If a man cannot provide his wife with HER HAQ then what right do his sisters have for gold jewellery and cars and mobile phones?

His family are liars.they told my husband that they owe money and cannot afford the daughters wedding expenses.I told my husband to send them a lot of money from our savings. Then I found out his sister bought a tv, fridge, microwave, dvd player, £500 bed, 3 gold jewellery sets, dining table, wardrobe, coffee table.then she ran out of money to buy a sofa and cried on the phone to my husband. JUSTIFY that sanumayaz.

Oh yeh they cant afford kharcha they said.then they told my husband that his brothers and sisters think its embarassing that they dont have a car so they HAD to buy one.

ALL LIES.

They really need to get their priorities straight, sponging off you two is not the answer & your sister-in-laws should know better.

Agreed that if they were having problems then it would be your duty to help as much as possible, but what they're doing is taking the mick. If it's not dealt with now then you'll be facing this crap for the rest of your lives & that's something I'm sure you don't need.

You're going to have to talk to them about this or they'll keep taking you for mugs. You have a baby on the way, You need to save as much as possbile cos after the lil one arrives the expenses will go up. They of all people should be encouraging you to save & not spend stupid amounts of money on them.

MAA said:

Thank you miss scorpio.at least someone understands.

No problem hun.

Ambareen.

That is seriously messed up.

dosselpoh said:

MISS SCORPIO said:

W'Salaam Joji.

Allah Tallah aap koh kaamyaab kare apni parhai mey, Inshah'Allah Ameen.

Jaldi zaroor wapas ana Joji, Inshah'Allah.

itnay loog chornay aye hein..mujay lag ra ha mai pakistan election larnay ja ra hon

Lol, agaar aap election kai leeyeh karay hote toh apko humara vote zaroor milta!

Arrey yaar mae usse bula bula kaar thaak chukee hoon!!

Woh tarro kae neeche Joji ki tasveer dekh kaar gana gaah rahe hai!!

(8) Dekha Hai Pehle Baar, Sajaan Kee Ankhon Mey Pyaar! (8)

True say, auntie!!

Happy Birthday Sweetie.

Cathy said:

MISS SCORPIO said:

Cathy said:

lo jee uskay liyeh rishta dhoond rahi hoon itna kafi nahi? Chalo aap paisay day day na mein shoppin kerlu gi waisay i h8 shoppin lekin aap kay liyeh .,ab or farmaishi program nahi chalay ga larki wikhao pehlay

Monopoly money sai kaam chalay gah?

Monopoly jahaiz mein dainge???... Achha hay ..Dono farigh tyme mein monopoly khelaingay

Acha time pass hoga, haina?

Cathy said:

MISS SCORPIO said:

dosselpoh said:

MISS SCORPIO said:

Haye Allah!!
Joji kai leeyeh rishta?

Wah jee wah, Hum uske leeyeh dhoond lay ghi ik rishta.

chupan chupai mai kisi ko dhoondna n rishtay dhondnay mai farq ha.. app sy nai hona yeh kaam:P:P

Lol, mae usse dhoond lhun ghi, fikaar naa karo joji.

Ahahah ...Abb syrf uss o naih ..Jojiii ko bhi dhoodna hay

Lol, Arbab unn dono koh dhoond ley gah!

What is a Comet?

From the ground, comets look quite small, white streaks of light hanging motionless and calmly in the night sky. In reality they're bulky objects hurtling through space at unimaginably fast speeds. Many years ago people used to think that comets were huge balls of fire. However now we know that they are solid, frozen, lifeless cosmic icebergs. Furthermore, they would be dark and invisible, if it were not for the heat of the Sun.

    The Origin of Comets

Scientists believe that most comets in the Solar System come from the Oort cloud - a ring of around 10 million million icy objects which resides around our Solar System, far beyond Pluto's orbit halfway between the Sun and another star (about 100,000 Au or 2 light years away).

A comet can easily be dislodged however (for example under the influence of a passing star), and may then come hurtling into the Solar System when. Attracted by the Sun's gravity, it would accelerate towards the Sun, building up speed and eventually travelling extremely fast when it reaches the planets. The potential for damage upon impact with a planet is therefore very real, as was shown when comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 crashed into the surface of Jupiter in July 1994. Most of the time they just zip around the Sun and then back into outer space, but occasionally they get trapped by Jupiter's gravity and make repeated visits to the Solar System (eg Halley's comet - see below) until they finally evaporate.

    Head and Tail

We here on Earth can only see them when they come close to the Sun. This is because they themselves do not generate any light and it is only when they approach the Sun that they develop large tails of luminous material. Also, when they get hot enough and the nucleus unfreezes, a coma develops and the gas inside absorbs ultraviolet light, giving it a bright blue look. When a comet gets close to the Sun in fact, its 'head' encompasses a small bright nucleus, typically about 10km in diameter, surrounded by the coma.

Contrary to what someone might naturally assume, comets' tails don't actually point from the direction they're travelling, instead they always point away from the Sun. This is because the dust and rock fragments which make up the comet's tail get 'blown' in this direction by the Solar Wind.

Probably the most famous comet, and certainly the most studied, is Halley's comet - named after Edmund Halley, the man who not only worked out that some comets actually orbit the Sun, but also figured out that a comet he was observing (ie Halley's comet) was in a solar orbit and would reappear every 76 years. He was right, and some evidence suggests that William the Conqueror saw it back in 1066. The last time it appeared was a little closer though, in 1986 and it is therefore scheduled again in 2062. When it appeared in the mid 1980s, many space craft were sent to the comet, gathering extensive data on which much of our cometary knowledge is now based. Halley's Comet's nucleus was the first to be imaged, from relatively close up, by the Giotto spacecraft.

Comet Shoemaker Levy 9 (officially designated D/1993 F2) is another very famous comet of recent times. As mentioned above, in July 1994, it collided with Jupiter, watched by hundreds of excited Astronomers from their telescopes on Earth. So great is Jupiter's gravitational field that the comet was actually torn apart into many pieces before it plunged into the Jovian atmosphere. Nontheless, it still produced visible scars on Jupiter's surface which took days to clear up.

What is an Asteroid?

Sometimes referred to as as 'minor planets', asteroids are small fragments of rock, not large enough to be classified as Planets, left over from the formation of the Solar System, about 4,500 million years ago. Over 8,000 of these have now been catalogued, though it is thought that vastly more of them still lie undiscovered. Those catalogued range wildly in size from the odd metre in diameter to hundreds of kilometres wide, although only about 250 have diameters of over 100km, and most tend to be about 1km across.

The largest asteroid we know about is 'Ceres', which is a massive 940km in diameter, and was discovered in 1801 by Italian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi (Ceres was in fact also the first asteroid to be discovered). 92.8% of all the asteroids so far examined are found to be made of stone whilst 5.7% are made from a mixture of Nickel and Iron. Their shapes tend to be very irregular, and some asteroids were even found to have their own 'moon'.

    Asteroid Locations and Dangers

Most asteroids in the Solar System are to be found in the Asteroid Belt (or Main Belt) which is in an elliptical orbit
Asteroid Ida, from Galileo
Credit: NASA/JpL
around the Sun, between Mars and Jupiter, ranging from 2.2 to 3.3 AUs from the Sun (see picture). There is also another lesser-known group of asteroids, the 'Trojans', which follow Jupiter's orbit around the Sun, roughly 60° ahead or behind the planet.

However, small bodies such as asteroids don't all just stay put in a regular orbit all the time. In fact, some can be found inside the Earth's own orbit. All it takes is for one asteroid to hit another for them both to end up hurtling away at high speed into the rest of the Solar Sysyem. Obviously this presents a potentially dangerous if a sizeable asteroid happens to end up hitting Earth.

There is even a theory, which has recieved a lot of support in recent years, which suggests that the dinosaurs were wiped out when an asteroid or comet hit the Earth near the Yucatan peninsula, forming the Chicxulub Crater, although this is in no way known for sure. Nevertheless, the potential for damage is catastrophic for humans, if an asteroid of a kilometre were to collide with the Earth, and it is primarily for this reason that both public curiosity and scientific research in asteroids have been increasing substantially in recent decades.

    Origin of Asteroids

There are many theories as to how asteroids originated but the most likely one is that they are left-overs from when the Solar System was created. Originally, there may have been as many as eight Mars sized objects in the main belt, but it is thought that Jupiter's gravitational influenced would have slowly caused them to fragment. One of these objects probably crashed into the Earth creating the moon (this is known as the 'Big Splash', see the Earth section for more details), another one must have survived and is now called Mars and the rest got broken up in collisions, with most of the debris now scattered around the Solar System or burned in the Sun and the rest in the Asteroid Belt. It is important to add however that scientists believe
Asteroid Eros, from NEAR
Credit: NASA/JpL
that the mass of all the known asteroids added together is less that half that of the Earth's Moon.

    The NEAR Mission

The NEAR (Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous) spacecraft was launched in 1996 too examine a certain asteroid called Eros (which is not actually part of the Main Belt) and on its way, it passed just1,200 km away from asteroid Matilde. The NEAR mission was very fruitful, and it revealed a lot of useful information about Eros, before it crashed, as planned, into the asteroid itself, taking photos from as close as 130 metres above the surface of Eros.

The Solar System.

The Solar System consists of (from the Middle outwards) The Sun, an average sized star of average brightness, Mercury, Venus, the Earth and Mars, four small rocky dense planets and then, seperated by the Asteroid belt, Jupiter Saturn Neptune and Uranus, four giant and not very dense 'gas' planets. Then there are the dwarf planets - a category of object invented in 2006 to describe other large objects orbiting the Sun which are however too small to be termed 'planets'. Currently there are three dwarf planets - Ceres, which is situated in the asteroid belt and is the largest known asteroid in the Solar System, Pluto, which lies beyond Neptune, and Eris, the largest of the dwarfs, which lies beyond Pluto.

In figures, the Solar System is made up of: Sun: 99.86%

Planets: 0.135%
Comets: 0.01%
Satellites: 0.00005%
Asteroids: 0.0000002%
Meteoroids: 0.0000001%
Interplanetary Medium: 0.0000001%

The Sun is the centre of the Solar System and the Earth orbits it at an average distance of 1 AU (150 millon kilometres). This is quite far and it takes the Sun's light 8.3 minutes to reach us. The are 8 planets which orbit the Sun, the smallest being Pluto and the largest being Jupiter. The Solar System isn't just made up of planets though and in between the orbit of Mars and Jupiter there is what's known as the asteroid belt. This belt consists of many, many asteroids which also orbit the Sun. You can find out more by visiting the asteroids or Meteors pages.

The Kuiper belt is a belt of icy, frozen, lifeless lumps of ice which sometimes enter the inner Solar System. I goes round the moon in a highly elliptical fashion, at its closest being just beyond Neptune yet at its furthest linking up with the Oort cloud, about 500,000 AU or 2 light years away!

The Solar System was born when a cloud of gas (made up of about 75% Hydrogen, 25% Helium and nearly 1% heavier elements) condensed enough to form solid objects, which slowly joined to make the Solar System as we know it. Ever wondered why the four planets closest to the Sun are small and rocky whereas the ones further away are big and gassy? Well, it's because close to the Sun it was too hot for most of the gas to survive so it got driven away from the sun or it vapourized leaving the inner planets with thinner atmospheres.

Neptune was predicted in 1845 by British mathematician John Adams and French mathematician Jean Leverrier by clever observatoions of Uranus' orbit. One year later, in 1846, German astronomer Johann Galle confirmed what the mathematicians thought by finding it using John and Jean's predictions. In the same year, Triton was discovered by British astronomer William Lassell. Its rings were discoverd nearly a century and a half later, in 1985 and Voyager 2 discovered six more satellites in 1989.

Of the four 'gas giants' that inhabit the outer Solar System, Neptune is both the smallest and the furthest from the Sun - the last major gaseous outpost before Pluto and the Kuiper Belt. As such it has never been observed in detail by a dedicated orbiter. Nontheless, in 1989 the Voyager 2 spacecraft supplied much information and many pictures about this distant, mysterious world, before it raced past it into the outer reaches of the solar system. Neptune was in fact the first planet to be 'predicted', and then subsequently observed. John Adams and Joseph Le Verrier independantly proposed an orbit for this planet, based on peculiarities in Uranus' orbit.

Atmosphere

Neptune is the Roman God of the Sea and certainly, from space, the colours remind one of the sea. In fact, underneath Neptune's atmosphere, there is thought to be an ocean of liquid methane and ice slush, surrounding a rocky core. However the reason Netune is blue is because the Methane in it's atmosphere absorbs red light. Neptune's atmosphere extends very far down, eventually merging into water and other melted ices, above its liquid outer core, which is approximately the same size as the Earth. It is assumed that the composition of Neptune is similar to that of Uranus, so we're looking at a uniform distribution of elements, rather than the internal layering which characterises Jupiter and to a lesser degree Saturn. Interestingly, Neptune's winds are up to nine times stronger than those on Earth, and three times stronger than those on Jupiter, despite its low energy input and great distance from the Sun.

Neptune is quite similar to Jupiter in that it has several oval hurricanes. It also has one 'Great Dark Spot' which, like Jupiter's Red Spot is a massive hurricane/storm. Unlike the Red Spot though, it seems to have recently vanished from view.

Other Facts:

Not much was known about Neptune before it was visited by the Voyager space probe, which made many interesting discoveries, for instance it cleared up the 'Neptune arc' problem. When viewed from Earth, faint arcs were spotted around Neptune, but Voyager showed that there are actually three complete rings around the planet, which vary in thickness.

Neptune's rotational axis is tilted at a large 30° to the plain of its solar orbit, and consequently the planet experiences rather extreme seasons, each lasting 41 years. During its 'summer' season therefore, each pole is in constant sunlight for 41 years. Due to the very elliptical nature of Pluto's orbit, on certain occasions Neptune can end up being further away from the Sun than Pluto, as its orbit cuts across Neptune's. On average however, Neptune's orbit is a massive 4,500million km away from the Sun - 30 times the distance between the Sun and the Earth.

Moons

Neptune's eight moons are: Naiad, Thalassa, Depoina, Galatea, Larissa, Proteus, Triton and Nereid. The most interesting is Triton which has many geyser-like eruptions, spewing invisible Nitrogen gas and dust particles many kilometres into the atmosphere. It's an icy world of frozen methane just 2720 km wide - smaller than Earth's moon!

Saturn (the Roman God of Agriculture) has a diameter of 120,000 km which makes it the second largest planet in the Solar System. Although this isn't quite as large as Jupiter, it still has a size to be reckoned with and across it's equator it could fit the Earth over nine times! Saturn is another 'Gas Giant' but, beneath the atmosphere it has an ocean of molecular liquid Hydrogen which enfolds a shell of metallic Hydrogen. A distinctive feature about Saturn is that it's shape is similar to that of a squashed football; it's flattened at the poles. This is because the planet spins so fast that the centrifugal force makes the equator bulge outwards.

Saturn's Rings

The most famous feature about Saturn is the series of rings which encircle it. They were first spotted in 1610 by the great Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei, who was mistified as to why Saturn had two 'cup holders' on either side of it. It wasn't until a few decades later, in 1659, that Christiaan Huygens (a Dutch astronomer) discovered that they were seperate from the planet, and must therefore be encircling it. Just 16 years later Cassini discovered the Cassini division. Subsequently it has been found that there are actually many rings around Saturn and that they are made of rock and ice. The rings are quite insubstantial; at at some points they may be only 1km thick! However, the overall effect made by all of these small rocks around Saturn is quite astonishing, and unique on this scale in our Solar System.

As you can see from the pictures, the rings themselves surround the planet totally and form a circle hundreds of thousands of kilometres in diameter. Indeed they stretch just about the same distance as the Moon is from the Earth. The rocks that form the rings are found to range in diameter from mere micrometres (1 micrometer = 0.000001 metre) to tens of metres.

Magnetic field

As with the other Jovian planets, Saturn has a strong magnetic field - 1,000 times stronger than Earth's in fact. Its magnetosphere encompasses the entire ring system, as well as most of its known satellites. In fact, the Hubble Space Telescope has shown that Saturn has aurorae (or Northern & Southern Lights) similar to those visible on Earth, where charged particles from the Solar Wind become trapped by a planet's magnetic field and collide with molecules of the planet's atmosphere, above the poles.

Atmosphere & Core

Saturn's atmosphere is a bit like Jupiter's except that it is colder and the cloud layers are thicker. The bands which are very visible on Jupiter are however fainter on Saturn, and have a tendancy to get wider in the equatorial regions. Like Jupiter, it also seems to have big oval-shaped storms raging in its atmosphere, though none on the scale of Jupiter's Great Red Spot.

The core of Saturn is thought to be very similar to that of Jupiter, so small and rocky, and surrounded by a layer of liquid metallic Hydrogen, and a molecular Hydrogen layer. In addition to the Hydrogen and Helium which are the main ingredients in Saturn's atmosphere, there are also traces of water, methane and ammonia. In the core, there are traces of various ices.

One notable feature of Saturn is that its core is thought to be at around 12,000°K, and it actually radiates more energy than it recieves from the Sun. This is most likely due to the same process of gravitational compression present in Jupiter, which provide the planet with heat. Around the equator winds sweep about at an impressive 1,800 km/h. It is not a particularly dense planet either, the mass is so spread out that on average it's less dense than water!

Moons

Saturn has over 30 satellites, plus probably others as yet undiscovered. Saturn's first 22 moons are : Pan, Atlas, Prometheus, Pandora, Epimitheus, Janus, Mimas, Enceladus, Thethys, Telesto, Calypso, Dione, Helene, Rhea, Titan, Hyperion, Iapetus and Phoebe and 4 other out moons. The most important one is Titan and scientists hope to find out what the Earth was like long ago through studying it. It's also a rather large moon, being bigger than Mercury. Titan is the only moon in the Solar System to have an atmosphere. Scientists recently discovered day clouds on Titan and this adds to substantial evidence suggesting it has clouds, rain and seas like Earth.

This is an exciting time for Saturn research, for at the time of writing the Cassini-Huygens mission is heading towards Saturn and its moon Titan. This mission, a joint European Space Agency, Italian Space Agency and NASA one, includes the most sophisticated and complete space probe ever sent to a distant planet, the final of the major spacecraft before NASA's 'cheaper, faster, better' philosophy kicked in. The mission consists of 2 parts - the Cassini orbiter will orbit Saturn for at least 4 years, whilst the European-built Huygens probe will be dropped into the atmosphere of Titan, and will perhaps even land on it.

Brief History:-

Galileo Galilei discovered Saturn's rings in 1610 and it was in 1659 that Chistiaans Huygens realised they weren't physically attatched to Saturn. Then in 1676 Italian-French astronomer Jean Dominique Cassini discovered the Cassini division in the rings. The first pictures of Saturn's polar regions were taken in 1979 by the Pioneer 11 and a year later, in 1980, Voyager (the probe, not the Star Trek starship) took 17,500 colour pictures of the planet, measured wind speeds in Saturn's equatorial region and measured Titan's size. Voyager 2 passed even closer than Voyager in 1981. On the 15th October 1997 the Cassini spacecraft was launched towards Saturn and it's expected to arrive in 2004.

The Moon is the earth's only natural satellite (hence its name the Moon) and it is an abnormaly large moon for a planet the size of the Earth - its diameter is about 1/4 the size of Earth's. Consequently, it is sometimes known as a double planet - not to the same extent as Pluto, whose moon Charon has a diameter just half Pluto's size, but enough to warrant the term's use.

As the Moon is the only celestial object close enough to be able to make out its details with the naked eye, as well as being by far the closest such body, we know more about the Moon than anything else in the Solar System (save the Planet Earth of course). Countless telescopes and spacecraft have scrutinised it in great detail, and men have even walked on its surface. And yet remarkably, we still know very little about its far side, which is forever facing away from the Earth and untouched by terran eyes (all we know about it is from the Luna 3 probe which passed by the far side in 1959). This is all because the length of the Moon's orbit of the Earth and the length of its day are identical - it is thus said to rotate synchronously with the Earth.

    Lunar Terrain

Broadly speaking, there are two main types of Lunar terrain - the brighter, higher 'terrae' and the darker 'maria'. The latin words are in fact rather descriptive; the terrae are packed full of craters and basins, often overlapping, which are almost all thought to be caused by meteoric impacts. This terrain therefore, whose top few kilometres of crust has been repeatedly broken, crushed and remoulded bythese impacts, bears more resemblance to the rugged earth land, than do the calmer, darker, lower maria (in latin = seas).

Rather unsurprisingly, of the 16% of Lunar land which is covered by the maria, most of it is on the side facing the Earth, as this side has been less exposed to meteoric impacts. It is thought that the maria as we see them today are substantially more recent than the terrae, and have therefore been subject to less bombardments. It is also important to point out that different such 'seas' on the Moon can be quite geologically different from each other.

    The Formation of the Moon

The existence of the Moon has long posed some challenging questions to Astronomers. After all, only 2 of the 4 inner planets, Earth and Mars, have moons, and Mars' two moons are clearly mere asteroids, captured by Mars' gravitational pull. Analysis of the Lunar rocks returned by the Apollo astronauts has shown that none of the previous theories of the Moon's formation could be totally correct. These theories included the idea that the Moon formed at the same time as the Earth from the same cloud of dust and gas, an idea which was shown to be wrong as the Lunar composition was shown to be slightly different to the Earth's. Another idea was that the Moon was captured by the Earth's gravity, but calculations show the Earth would not have had a strong enough gravitational pull to capture a fast-moving Moon sized object.

However, in the mid 1970s, a new theory was proposed, which has since recieved enthusiastic support from many astronomers, and this si the 'giant impact' theory. The idea is that a large object hit a young, hot Earth 4,500 million years ago in an off-centre collision, causing large quantities of both the Earth and of the object's material to be ejected from the planet and into the Earth's orbit. This material eventually coalesced to form the Moon. Not only does this hypothesis sound plausible, but it would also explain the Earth's fast spin rate, and the orientation of the Moon's orbit.

    Other Information

The 'lunar crust' was formed near the start of the moon's history by it's outer layers melting to form a layer of magma which covered the whole moon and then subsequently cooling. Although in its history it has had some volcanic activity, this has now ceased and the Moon is sometimes referred to as a 'fossil planet'. This isn't entirely true though as earthquakes have been recorded deep below the Moon's crust.

Brief History:-

The oldest Moon rock we have is 4,500 million years old but there is evidence to suggest that the Moon is even older. The first human telescopic observation of it though was in 1610 by Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei. Then, a few centuries later in 1959 the Soviet Luna 2 became the first spacecraft to reach (or rather, crash into) the Moon. The first landing followed in 1966 by the Luna 9. Then the manned Apollo 11 reached the moon in 1969, followed by the rest of the Apollo missions (12-17) - except of course for Apollo 13. Then in 1998, 25 years after the last Moon mission, the NASA Lunar Prospector orbited the moon and then crashed into it. More info including why it 'failed to kick up a visible dust cloud on impact.

The Sun is our closest star and the centre of the Solar System. It's four and a half thousand million years old and in 6 thousand million years or so years, it is predicted that it will finally reach the end of its life (more on that further down). Currently however, it is an 'average' sized star, classified as a G2 type main sequence star. These can be found quite abundantly throughout the visible universe.

However, don't let this apparent 'normalness' of the Sun's size in comparison with other stars fool you - compared with anything else in our solar system, it is, quite literally, absolutely massive! To give you an idea of its size, it has 333,400 times more mass than the Earth and contains 99.86% of the mass of the entire Solar System - this means Jupiter and all the other planets and asteroids only make up 0.14% of the mass of the Solar System! In fact just a pinhead of the Sun's core material could kill a person 160 kilometres away.

Each second the Sun loses 4.5 million tonnes of material - this means that in 42 million years it would lose enough material to make the Earth. However this high loss of mass is really rather insignificant when compared to the total mass of the Sun - over the past 4,500 million years it has barely lost a few hundredths of a percent of its total mass. Interestingly, all the light we see from the Sun comes from a layer 500km deep (the top 0.1%) and takes about 8.3 minutes to reach us down here on Earth. The radiation does however take about 170,000 years to make its way out from the Sun's core.

Viewed from the surface of the Earth, to normal human beings the Sun may appear to be a simple, round uniform ball of a very hot substance. When observed in detail however, as the pictures show, this is far from being the case. In reality it has several well-defined layers leading up its surface, and above its surface it even has what could be termed it's atmosphere - the mystifyingly scorching solar corona.

An imaginary solar 'tourist', travelling out from the centre of the Sun, would begin his journey at a sweltering 15.6million°K in the core, gradually decreasing as he got further from the centre, eventually reaching just 5780 or so Kelvins in the photosphere - the Sun's 'surface'. However, the temperature would then begin to increase as he progresses through the Chromosphere, to 10,000K, culminating in an a massive 1million K (or higher) in the corona! The exact reason for this unexpectedly high temperature in the corona is still unknown, thoguh recent research has ascertained that the energy needed to heat the corona to such high temperatures is somehow provided by the Sun's vast magnetic field.

The birth of the Sun, it was born about 4.5 thousand million years ago. That's quite a long time (about 1.679 x 1012 days). Anyway, it was formed, like all stars, when a cloud of gas of at least 100 Solar Masses, floating around the galaxy got squeezed by an outside influence (ie a nearby supernova explosion or the pressure of a passing spiral arm of the galaxy) and started to collapse. After a while of this, the cloud (or 'nebula') reached a point that it continued collapsing under its own weight, breaking up in the process to make many different stars. As the part that was to be the Sun collapsed further, it got more dense and increased in temperature. After a while the matter formed a spherical shape and when the temperature in the centre reached about 15 million°C, it got hot enough for nuclear reactions to start. The outward force created by these reactions acted as a stabilizing influence on the star, preventing further collapse, so the star eventually reached an equilibrium.

The Sun is now a stable star, though gradually increasing in luminosity. It is presently 'burning' hydrogen in its core, converting it into Helium by a nuclear fusion process. And here's where the extremely high temperature and pressure present in the core of the Sun comes in, for these conditions make it impossible for whole atoms to exist - instead the 'protons' and 'electrons' forming atoms are free to move sperately, thereby forming a plasma in the Solar core. The immense pressure of the Sun's weight then acts to push protons and electrons closer together than they would be normally, and eventually to fuse together 4 Hydrogen nuclei (ie 4 protons), in a number of stages, to end up with 1 helium nucleus (ie 2 protons and 2 neutrons).

However, the Helium nucleus formed actually contains very slightly less mass than the 4 protons which formed it. This is because the rest of the mass is converted into pure energy in the ratio E=mc². This simple reaction, occurring on a vast scale inside the Sun's core, produces absolutely vast amounts of energy, and is the source of all electromagnetic radiation (and heat) coming from the Sun.
In fact about 700 million tons of Hydrogen are converted to Helium every second, releasing 5 million tons of pure energy.

However nuclear fusion can only keep happening for another four thousand million years or so, when Hydrogen will then run out in the core. When this happens the inner core will shrink and the Sun will expand and get hotter, due to Hydrogen being 'burned' in the outer core, engulfing Mercury and nearly reaching Venus. As it does so, the core will reach a blistering 100 million°C and will begin to burn the Helium there. This will keep the star stable as a 'Red Giant' for a thousand million years or so until the Helium runs out. When this happens, the core will begin collapsing again and it'll get hotter and the star will get bigger once more, expanding to the present orbit of Earth.

At this point, the Sun will be very unstable, expanding and shrinking often and losing a lot of material into space. Soon afterwards, all that will be left will be its inner Carbon core, which, although it will still contain about 2 thirds of the Sun's mass, will be collapsed so much that it will have reached the ultimate density, Quantum forces will stop it collapsing further and it'll become a 'White Dwarf' - a small star about the size of the Earth but much denser (about 1cm3 of this stuff would have the mass of a tonne - that's a million times the density of water!)

The European Space Agency and NASA are operating the SOHO (which was successfully launched in 1995) satellite and ESA will soon launch the Cluster II. This is finding out about how the Sun interacts with the Earth. The SOHO (SOlar and Heliospheric Observatory) telescope is studying and staring at the Sun while the Cluster II will study the Earth and the effects the Sun has on it.

        The Planets

The Solar System as we know it today contains 8 planets - the four rocky inner planets of Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars, and then the four gas giants, comprising Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, these two distinct groups seperated by the Asteroid Belt. There are also 3 known dwarf planets - objects not quite large enough to be considered proper planets, but too big to be thought of as mere asteroids or rubble. These are Ceres, Pluto and Eris (more on them below).

    Differences between inner & outer planets


So in the Solar System, we have two groups of planets - the outer gas giants and the inner rocky ones. The rocky ones are the first four and they're much smaller and denser than the others, containing a much higher percentage of metal elements, and less gases (Mercury and Mars do not in fact have any atmosphere to speak of!). Even Venus' thick, scorching atmosphere only accounts for a small fraction of its overall composition. The other four are instead a lot larger and have very dense atmospheres with (relatively) small cores.
The reason for this state of affairs, put simply, is that when the Solar System was born, most of the gases near the Sun were either vaporised or blown away by the Solar winds so that only the heavy, metal & rock materials were left to form the inner planets. Further away though there was plenty of gas and this accumulated together to form behemoths the size of Saturn and Jupiter.

    Planets give out heat too...

In the outer Solar System, the planets recieve much less light and heat from the Sun, as they are much further away, and the Solar radiation travelling outwards behaves according to an inverse square law. It is thus much easier to detect the small amounts of heat and light given out by the planets themselves. All planets give out energy to some degree; the terrestrial ones by slow radioactive decay of isotopes formed since the planet's formation, the gas giants emit heat left over since the planets' final phases contraction when they were formed. With the exception of Uranus, the gas giants emit more heat than the terrestrial planets.

Inner Planets

The inner planets, Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars, can be (very) roughly split into 2 sub-groups. The first and last of the inner planets, Mercury and Mars respectively, are both comparatively small (Mercury has a diameter of 4,800km and Mars of 6,700km compared to Earth's 12,800km) and have no atmospheres to speak of.

The middle two planets, Venus and Earth on the other hand, are very similar in size (Venus has a diameter of 12,100km to Earth's 12,800km) and have a similar composition, mass and density. However, Venus' position slightly closer to the Sun has resulted in a 'runaway greenhouse effect' creating a scorching, styfling inferno on the surface of the planet, whereas Earth is relatively comfortable for humans.

    Outer Planets

For the outer planets, the division is more distinct, with the inner two gas giants, Jupiter and Saturn being quite different in certain ways from the outer two gas giants, Uranus and Neptune. Again in terms of size Saturn, with a diameter of 120,000km is not a world away from Jupiter, with a 142,000km diameter. However the other two planets, Uranus and Neptunes have diameters of 'only' 51,800km and 50,000km respectively - roughly the size of the core of Saturn or Jupiter.

This large size difference is responsible for many other differences between the two groups, for instance Jupiter and Saturn both have sufficiently high internal pressures to 'squeeze' large quantities of Hydrogen into a metallic state in their cores, whilst Uranus and Neptune can produce only a tiny fraction of this amount. As a consequence, their magnetic fields are much smaller than those of Saturn and Jupiter, whose magnetic fields are generated in large part thanks to electrical currents moving through this material.

Dwarf Planets

This category of object is a recent creation (2006), introduced to accomodate objects orbiting the Sun which are not quite large enough to be termed 'planets', but whose size warrants them a special classification above 'asteroid' or floating object. The criteria for a dwarf planet are that it must orbit the Sun, have enough mass such that its gravity causes it to be almost round in shape, and it must not be a satellite of another planet. The closest dwarf planet to the Sun is Ceres, which lies in the asteroid belt, then there is Pluto, which normally lies just beyond Neptune, and finally there is Eris, discovered in 2005, which normally lies beyond Pluto.

The Solar System does not end with either Pluto or Eris, for as mentioned earlier there is another large 'belt' of objects orbiting the Sun, a belt covering a much greater area and with much greater mass than the asteroid belt. This belt is called the Kuiper Belt, and it is a fairly recent discovery - the first evidence for it was only found in the mid 1980s so we still do not know a lot about it. Most Kuiper Belt Objects, or KBOs, have not yet been seen by astronomers, and it is expected that there are a large number, perhaps greater than 40 or 50, whose size is comparable or greater than that of Pluto. It is this reason that primarily caused the IAU to invent the 'dwarf planet' label due to the fear that otherwise there could be 40 or 50 new 'planets' to add to the list over the next few decades.

So far, KBOs have been seen from distances ranging from 30AU to 50AU from the Sun (Pluto's average orbit is at about 39AU). It is estimated that the mass of KBOs in this region is just above that of Mercury. However it is also estimated that the Kuiper belt could extend to a potential distance of 1000AUs from the Sun!

    Exploration

Many probes, satellites and rockets have been sent out to different planets and it is hoped (by me) that soon there will be manned missions to the Moon and Mars. The only manned landings so far have been in the late 60's (69) and 70's with the Apollo missions. The first man in space was the Russian Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin in 1961 and the first satellite was the Russian Sputnik in 1958. The first man to have a 'spacewalk' was Cosmonaut Alexi Leonov. There have been no disasters involving the deaths of human lives in space, though in 1970 Apollo 13 experienced a few difficulties.

At the moment however, the main goal the big space agencies are working towards is the International Space Station which is at present orbiting the Earth with a crew always on board. In 2004, both Europe and America made their intentions clear to press on with manned spaceflight by aiming to establish permanent manned bases on first the Moon, and then Mars, within the next half-century. It remains to be seen if this will be achieved.

There are no big dangerous weapons in space, although that is set to change if the american military get their way.

Mars is nicknamed the "Red Planet," because it looks reddish in the night sky. Mars has 2 moons.

The fastest flashes moves at 140,000km per second.
               
                      ~~~Did you know~~~
                   
That the Sun makes up 99.86% of the Solar System's mass! That means that all the planets put together (including Jupiter) as well as all the asteroids only make up about 0.14% of the Solar System's mass

That Jupiter's magnetic field is so massive that it pours billions of Watts into Earths magnetic field every day!

That a massive body 100km wide travelling at over 512,000km/h crashed into Mercury to form the Caloris Basin. The impaact was so great it sent shockwaves round Mercury creating its hilly lineated terrain.

That just a pinhead of the Sun's raw material could kill someone up to 160 kilometres away!

That the length of a Plutonian year is 248 of our years! That means that one orbit of the Sun takes about 2 and a half Earth centuries. That's a quarter of a Millenium!

That Olympus Mons (on Mars) is the largest Volcanic mountain in the Solar System. It is 600 km across and 27 km high! And you thought Mount Everest (about 8 and a half km high) was tall! To see a great overhead picture of it click here.

That a Supernova explosion produces more energy in its first ten seconds than the Sun during the whole of its 10 billion year lifetime and that for a brief period, it creates more energy than the rest of a galaxy put together!!

That the comet with the longest ever recorded tail is the Great Comet of 1843. Its tail stretched over 800 million kilometres! This is about the same distance the Earth is from Jupiter!

That the energy in the sunlight we see today started out in the core of the Sun 30,000 years ago - it spent most of this time passing through the dense atoms that make the sun and just 8 minutes to reach us once it had left the Sun!

That almost all of the heavier elements in your body (eg calcium, iron, carbon) were made somewhere in supernovae explosions!

That some rocks found on Earth are actually pieces of Mars!

That Saturn has such a low density that it would float if put in water!

That due to the fact that water expands when heated, the Atantic ocean increses in width by 3cm every year!

That some volcanoes on Jupiter's moon Io eject material at speeds of up to 1km/second! This is about 20 times faster than the volcanoes here on Earth can manage it!

That the amount of the Sun's energy reaching the Earth's atmosphere (known as the Solar constant) is equivalent to 1.37 kw of electricity per square metre!

When you look at the Andromeda galaxy (which is 2.3 million light years away), the light you are seeing took 2.3 million years to reach you. Thus you are seeing the galaxy as it was 2.3 million years ago.

Light from the sun takes 8 minutes to reach you, thus you see the sun as it was 8 minutes ago. It might have blown up 4 minutes ago and you wouldn't know about it!

The Earth is not a sphere! It actually is an oblate spheroid, it is squashed slightly at the poles and bulges out at the equator due to its rotation.

Spare a thought for the constellations that never made it into the official list... these include Machina Electrica (the electricity generator), Officina Typographica (The Printing Office), and Turdus Solitarius (the solitary thrush)

When Galileo viewed Saturn for the first time through a telescope, he described the planet as having "ears". It was not until 1655 that Christian Huygens suggested the crazy theory that they might be an enormous set of rings around the planet.

If you could put Saturn in an enormous bathtub, it would float. The planet is less dense than water.

A teaspoon-full of Neutron star would weigh about 112 million tonnes.

Jupiter is heavier than all the other planets put together.

Even on the clearest night, the human eye can only see about 3,000 stars. There are an estimated 100,000,000,000 in our galaxy alone!

The tallest mountain in the solar system is Olympus Mons, on Mars at a height of about 15 miles, three times the height of Mount Everest. It covers an area about half the size of Spain.

If the sun were the size of a dot on an ordinary-sized letter 'i', then the nearest star would be 10 miles away.

Half-a-billionth of the energy released by the sun reaches the Earth

Temperatures on Venus are hot enough to melt lead.

If you could travel at the speed of light (186,000 miles per second) it would take 100,000 years to cross our galaxy!

Only one side of the moon ever faces Earth. The moons period of rotation is exactly the same as it's period of orbit.

Betelgeuse, the bright star on Orion's top-left shoulder, is so big that if it was placed where the sun is, it would swallow up Earth, Mars and Jupiter!

If you stand on the equator, you are spinning at about 1,000 mph in as the Earth turns, as well as charging along at 67,000 mph round the sun.

On the equator you are about 3% lighter than at the poles, due to the centrifugal force of the Earth spinning.

The atmosphere on Earth is proportionately thinner than the skin on an apple.

On Mercury a day (the time it takes for it to spin round once) is 59 Earth-days. Its year (the time it takes to orbit the sun) is 88 days- that means there are fewer than 2 days in a year!

If a piece of the sun the size of a pinhead were to be placed on Earth, you could not safely stand within 90 miles of it!

Its estimated that the number of stars in the universe is greater than the number of grains of sand on all the beaches in the world! On a clear night, we can see the equivalent of a handful of sand.

Every year the sun evaporates 100,000 cubic miles of water from Earth (that weighs 400 trillion tonnes!)

Jupiter acts as a huge vacuum cleaner, attracting and absorbing comets and meteors. Some estimates say that without Jupiters gravitational influence the number of massive projectiles hitting Earth would be 10,000 times greater.

Astronomers believe that space is not a complete vacuum-there are three atoms per cubic metre.

Saturn is not the only planet with rings- Neptune has it's own ring system.

The Planet Jupiter has no solid surface. It is made up of hydrogen and helium and has only layers of gaseous clouds.

1. One of the most extreme environments in the world can be found in the Lost City Hydrothermal Field located in the underwater Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Surreal living creatures can thrive at depths of 8,000 feet (2438.4 meters) with extreme pressures and temperatures beyond 700 degrees Fahrenheit (371 degrees Celsius).

2. The largest current in the world is off the shores of Japan, called the Kuroshio Current. This current travels between 25 and 75 miles (40 and 121 kilometers) a day at the rate of 1-3 miles (1.4-4.8 kilometers) per hour. Its depths exceed 3,300 feet (975 meters) deep.

3. The HARDSUIT 2000 is the newest piece of equipment in the Navy’s Submarine Rescue program. The HARDSUIT 2000 is an Atmospheric Diving Suit, or ADS. An Atmospheric Diving Suit is a submersible that maintains one atmosphere of pressure inside the diver’s suit, regardless of depth. When a diver uses the HARDSUIT 2000 instead of the typical surface supplied divesuit, she or he can dive as deep as 2,000 feet (or 609.6 meters) for many hours without any of the physiological hazards of depth, such as the "bends" or nitrogen narcosis.

4. Glacial ice often appears blue. Years of compression tightly pack and condense the ice over time, forcing out the tiny air pockets between crystals. When glacier ice becomes extremely dense, the ice absorbs all other colors in the spectrum, except for blue which it reflects. The result is what appears to be blue ice. When glacier ice appears white, this usually indicates the presence of many tiny air bubbles in the ice.
5. The biggest wave ever documented occurred in narrow Lituya Bay on Alaska’s coast in 1958. An earthquake hit the area and shook loose 90 million tons of dirt and glacier from a mountainside at the head of the bay. When the debris hit the water, a massive 1,720-foot (378 meters) tsunami wave was created and swept through the bay. It inundated 5 square miles (12.9 sq kilometers) of land and stripped the shores of thousands of rainforest spruce and hemlock.

6. New developments in the study of geology during the 1960s brought to light the idea that the Earth’s outer shell is made of shifting plates, rather than fixed continents.

7. One of the wettest places on Earth is Mount Wai'ale'ale in Hawaii. It has one of the highest average annual rainfalls on Earth: about 450 inches (11.4 m).

8. The greatest lava eruption in history is considered to be Mount Laki, located in Iceland. On June 8, 1793, Laki started to erupt and didn’t stop for 8 months. The tremendous amount of gaseous haze killed approximately one-fifth of Iceland’s population, as well as crops and animals, resulting in what was called the Haze Famine.

9. The edges of tectonic plates are called belts and are where earthquakes are more likely to occur, specifically because of constant plate movements. One belt, called the Circum-Pacific Belt, has frequent earthquakes and volcanic activity and has been given the name The Ring of Fire.

10. Earthquakes occur every day all over the world. The worst earthquake ever recorded in history occurred in Shansi, China, on January 23, 1556. It was reported to have killed 830,000 people.