Our Solar System Trivia

1. Approximately how long, in Earth-years, would it take the planet Mercury to make 1000 revolutions around the sun?

From Quiz Another Thousand Circles 'Round the Sun

Answer: 241 years

Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun and has an elliptical orbit of 88 days meaning it travels around the Sun almost four times in the one year it takes the Earth to revolve around the Sun. The planet gets as close as 29 million miles (47 million km) to the Sun, and as far away as 43 million miles (70 million km) from the Sun. However it takes 59 Earth-days for Mercury to make one rotation. It is the smallest planet in the solar system and its diameter of 3,030 miles (4,876 kilometres) makes it only slightly bigger than Earth's moon. It is smaller than both Saturn's moon Titan and Jupiter's moon Ganymede. Mercury, counter-intuitively, can be very cold. The temperature can reach 840 degrees Fahrenheit (450 degrees Celsius), during the day but, at night, temperatures can drop to minus 275 F (minus 170 C). The range of more than 1,100 F (600 C), is the largest of any planet in the solar system. The craters at the poles never receive sunlight and it is postulated they contain water ice. The atmosphere around Mercury is so thin it is actually an exosphere, which is atoms blown off the surface by solar wind. The exosphere is composed mostly of oxygen, sodium, hydrogen, helium, and potassium.

From Quiz Volcanoes in Space

Answer: Triton

Triton has cryovolcanoes. A cryovolcano is a volcano that erupts volatiles such as water, ammonia or methane, instead of molten rock. Collectively referred to as cryomagma or ice-volcanic melt, these substances are usually liquids and form plumes, but can also be in vapour form. After eruption, cryomagma condenses to a solid form when exposed to the very low surrounding temperature. Cryovolcanoes form on icy moons, and possibly on other low-temperature astronomical objects.

From Quiz I'm Ceres and Don't Call Me an Asteroid

Answer: 1801

Ceres was first discovered by Giuseppe Piazzi in 1801. Piazzi was a Catholic priest and astronomer who observed the dwarf planet from the Palermo Astronomical Observatory in Sicily. He named the new planet Cerere Ferdinandea after the Roman goddess Ceres and King Ferdinand I of Sicily. The name was shortened to simply Ceres.

From Quiz Space Oddity

Answer: Eccentricity

Famously calculated by Johannes Kepler in the early 1600s, orbital eccentricity occurs in a range with 0 being a circular orbit, values between 0 and 1 being elliptical and values greater than 1 being hyperbolic. The moon Triton has an eccentricity of 0.00002 making it a near circular orbit around Neptune whereas the comet Hale-Bopp is near parabolic in its path around the Sun with an eccentricity of 0.9951. In regard to the planets, Venus has the lowest eccentricity (0.0068), Earth is third lowest (0.0167), and Mercury is the most eccentric (0.2056).

From Quiz Mountains of the Solar System

Answer: Caloris Basin

Caloris Basin is an impact area roughly 1,540 km in diameter. The mountains surrounding the basin reach up to 2 km above the surface.

From Quiz The Night Sky

Answer: their temperature

Blue stars are the hottest stars, while red stars are the coolest. Our sun is yellow, which means it is about 5,200 to 6,000 degrees Kelvin. The more massive a star is, the faster it will burn, and the hotter it will be. This causes hotter stars to die more quickly, because they burn at a higher rate. Stars are classified on a scale of O, B, A, F, G, K, and M. O stars are the hottest, while M stars are the coolest. Our sun is a G star (on the bottom half of the scale, relatively cooler than the other stars).

From Quiz The Solar System: From White to Black

Answer: Enceladus

Enceladus is a natural satellite of Saturn which is covered in a crust of ice. Due to this, it reflects approximately 99% of the light which shines upon it.

From Quiz 90377 Sedna

Answer: 11,400 years

With such an orbit, it is highly unlikely that the object was perturbed by Neptune's gravity, which influences most object beyond its orbit. There are several theories about what could be causing this, though by early 2016, none had been confirmed.

From Quiz Astronomy: "We All Shine On"

Answer: Fusion of hydrogen nuclei into helium

The sun, at 1 392 685 km in diameter and 1.99x10E27 metric tonnes, is almost 110 times the size of Earth and 330 000 times as heavy as Earth. Through fusion of hydrogen nuclei, 6 200 000 tonnes of hydrogen are fused per second in its core. The sun contains around 74-75% hydrogen and 23-24% helium but just over 2% in weight is attributed to oxygen, carbon, iron and neon.

From Quiz Earth, as seen from space

Answer: The Sun's gravity has a larger effect on it than Earth's

A concept called the Tug-of-War is something used to determine the relationship between the Sun's gravity and the gravity of whatever the object orbits. Earth is the only planet-moon system where the Sun's gravity is stronger than the primary body. Because of this, the Moon moves away from us at a rate of about an inch a year.

From Quiz 1 Ceres

Answer: asteroid

When discovered, it was called a planet along with the other three largest asteroids. However, astronomers noticed many of these objects past Mars, so they decided to make an entirely new designation for these bodies. William Herschel coined the term "asteroid" meaning "starlike". In 2006, when the IAU (International Astronomical Union) decided to finally define a planet, Ceres fit the definition of a dwarf planet. This means that it directly orbits the Sun, it has enough mass to round itself under its own gravity, and it is not dominant in its orbit.

From Quiz 136108 Haumea

Answer: It is very elliptical in shape, somewhat like an egg

An ellipsoid is a three-dimensional oval, so this is truly a strange shape for such a large object to be in. This is probably due to its rapid rotation speed. In actuality, no known object in space is perfectly spherical, though it is very hard to notice with most objects that are in such a shape.

From Quiz 136199 Eris

Answer: Scattered Disc

The Scattered Disc is a region just beyond the Kuiper Belt. It is thought to be sparsely filled with icy SSSBs (Small Solar System Bodies).

From Quiz 9 for 10 - Our Solar System

Answer: Deimos

Deimos is the smaller of Mars' two moons. It is named after a mythological Greek figure, the son of Ares and Aphrodite.

From Quiz What's a Dwarf Planet?

Answer: Charon

The first three of Pluto's moons to be discovered were Charon, Nix and Hydra. Charon is the largest moon. Hydra is said to be bigger than Nix because when it was discovered it was 25% brighter.

From Quiz Pluto and Other Dwarf Planets

Answer: Eris

Eris was thought to be larger than Pluto, until the New Horizons spacecraft flew past Pluto in 2015. Charon (Pluto's moon) is smaller, while Sedna is not located in the Kuiper Belt. Makemake was discovered in 2005.

From Quiz Take a Trip Through The Solar System!

Answer: G

The sun is only a medium temperature. Most people connect red with hot and blue with cold, but with stars the blue ones are very, very hot and are designated as class O or B. The red ones are slightly cooler (although still very hot!) and fall in the classification K and M. Our sun is a yellowish sort of colour, cooler than other stars and is classed as a G2 star, with the two meaning it is one of the hottest in the G category; only G1 is hotter..

From Quiz Facts About our Solar System

Answer: Baily's beads

Francis Baily (1836), an English astronomer, observed this phenomena. An arc (a part of a circle's circumference) of bright light which looks like beads are seen during a total solar eclipse as the last narrow crescent of the Sun begins to disappear. They surround the edge of the moon. These lights are called Baily's beads.

From Quiz Our Solar System and Galaxy by the Numbers

Answer: 193

The distance from the Earth to the Sun (92,750,679.4 miles) is roughly equivalent to just over 18,000 round trips between New York and San Francisco.

From Quiz New Dwarf Planet Discovered! Now Called Eris.

Answer: Xena

Xena was a popular TV-series about a fictional ancient Greek warrior princess on air when they were looking for planets and, according to the discovering team", they always wanted to name something 'Xena'". Hippolyta is the queen of the Amazons in Greek mythology, Barbara is Bush and "Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeere's Johnny". Update April 2008: Since September 13, 2006, the dwarf planet was officially named Eris.

From Quiz The Fascinating Solar System

Answer: It seemed to move faster than any other planet

Titan and Ganymede are bigger than Mercury. Titan is one of Saturn's moons and Ganymede is one of Jupiter's moons. Earth is 40 percent bigger than Mercury and the Moon is 40 percent smaller than Mercury. The Romans named it after the messenger of the gods.

From Quiz About Our Solar System

Answer: Venus has the greenhouse effect

Venus' greenhouse effect lets in radiant energy from the sun, but prevents it from escaping. Its thick atmosphere of, mostly, carbon dioxide traps heat. The temperature on Venus goes up to 860F. Hotter than most ovens and hot enough to melt lead.

From Quiz Solar System - Random Facts

Answer: 4.6 billion years ago; 5 billion years

The Sun as we know it today is a yellow G2 star, with a surface temperature of 6000 K. It has been active for about 4.5 billion years. This figure was determined by dating other radioactive objects known to have approximately the same age. So far, the Sun has consumed about half of the hydrogen atoms in its core. In spite of using 5 million tones of hydrogen in fusion reactions every second, there is still enough material left to power it for another 5 billion years. However this doesn't mean that the Sun will stay the same during this period... It will get bigger and hotter until the nuclear reactions in its core will stop. Then, it will become a giant red star (with a surface temperature of 3000 K), reaching the orbit of Mercury, which will vanish. The Sun will gradually cool down and eventually 'die', after having burned out Venus and unfortunately, Earth.

From Quiz The Solar System Revisited

Answer: Earth

Cruithne was discovered in 1986 and takes 770 years to complete its orbit. Other scientists don't consider it a moon at all because it's orbit is horseshoe shaped.

From Quiz Solar system questions

Answer: 150 light years

The nearest bright star cluster to the Sun is the Hyades about 150 light years away. The Hyades form the bull's head in the constellation "Taurus".

From Quiz The Earth and the Moon are Gossiping

Answer: Saturn

Saturn is the least dense of the planets. Its specific gravity (0.7) is less than that of water.

From Quiz Interesting Planetary Data

Answer: an inferior planet

Only Mercury and Venus are inferior planets, in other words, they are closer to the Sun than the Earth.

From Quiz Basic Solar System Astronomy

Answer: One

The Moon, sometimes referred to as Luna, is Earth's only natural satellite. Earth is the only planet in our solar system with exactly one natural satellite - Mercury and Venus have none, Mars has two, and the four large gas giants all have several.

From Quiz The Solar System

Answer: 15 million Kelvins

The extreme temperature and pressure at the sun's core permit the fusion of hydrogen nuclei into helium nuclei. In a single second, the sun will fuse 700 billion tons of hydrogen into helium.

From Quiz The Solar System

Answer: Mars

Olympus Mons rises 24,000m and is 600 km across. Its last eruption may have been about 25 million years ago.

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Last Updated Jul 25 2026 5:46 AM

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