This is the Universe that West Pasco is Located in

To fully take advantage of living in West Pasco County, one should know a little about the night sky. Our special combination of mild winters, clear skies and bright stars (because of the conspicuous lack of light pollution at night) make it a prime place (like Cape Canaveral exactly opposite us on the East Coast) for starviewing. And besides, what will the high school geography class of 2100 be studying? Perhaps even by then, we may be on our way to being a multi-planet species.  It is absolutely inevitable for people to eventually explore and colonize our solar neighborhood. In what an amazing age we will live, on that day when we reach out to the rest of our star system.  

Below is this System: planets in caps with their order from our star...

EXPLINATION: size in miles is the diameter of the world, orbits is which body it revolves around and the number next to it is, for planets which one it is in order, for moons the size compred with the rest of them around that planet. Landscape is what it is like on that world, shape is either round like Earth (sphere) or like a potato (irregularr). Livability tells us the chances that people in the future will ever be able to put a base or a colony on that world (no chance, bad chance, ok chance, good chance, great chance, and Earth, which is outstanding).

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THE 35 SIGNIFICANT WORLDS AROUND US

These worlds are significant for a few different reasons. All the planets and large moons are significant for us, and are all included.

Others like Phobos and Deimos are not large but significant because they are the only moons of Mars, our neighbor.

 Name              how big?         what it orbits     What it is like there    obvious       how is it for a base?

This gas giant is the largest planet and has a molten liquid layer and a solid rock core.

A gas giant with a beautiful ring of iceballs and rock. Like Jupiter, below the gas is liquid and solid rock at the core.

This ice giant has a gas atmosphere and liquid methane interior.

An ice giant that also has a gas atmosphere and liquid methane interior

A large terrestrial planet with oceans a few miles deep, air up to 7 miles up, and life in between. Easily the best place in the universe!

This is the nastiest place around, forcast calls for a blistering 980 degree high, high pressure and sulpheric acid rain. The beach anyone?

The place most like the Earth, it has a pink atmosphere, red rocky landscape and polar ice caps that used to be an ocean of water.

A moon of ridges and craters in the Jupiter system this is the largest moon there is. It has no atmosphere but Ganymede has a magnetosphere like Earth, because it is active underground, like Earth, but without volcanoes.

The Saturn system's largest moon has oceans, land and an orange atmosphere. Building blocks of life are here like they were on the early Earth.

Closest planet is a rocky world, no atmosphere, fried by its proximity to the star.

A rocky moon in the Jupiter system, very far orbit, no atmosphere.

A volcanic, molten moon of Jupiter, spewing fountains of lava into space, to fall back onto the surface.

A rocky world in the Earth system, visited by astronauts from the United States of America in 1969, no atmosphere.

A moon of solid ice in the Jupiter system with a warm ocean under the ice. No atmosphere.

This moon in the Neptune system is rock and ice, spewing guysers of water out of it. Orbits backward cause it was caught in Neptune's gravity.

The most remote planet is the smallest. A purplish rocky world with a thin atmosphere that freezes to form ice crystals on the surface.

Largest moon of the Uranus system is strange because it has hardly any craters because it used to have liquid water and internal heat, when the heat went away the water froze, smoothing it. It is half ice and half rock.

An ice moon with small amounts of rock, Rhea is Saturn's 2nd largest moon.

Another moon of Uranus, Oberon is half ice and half rock with many craters, and a 4 mile high mountain. Geologic activity ended earlier here, so there are more craters than on the other moons.

This moon of Saturn is bizarre because one side is dark like Proteus and the other side is bright like Europa.

Pluto's only moon is a frozen ball of ice and rock and is the largest moon in relation to its planet. It tugs at Pluto and moves it with its gravity because of this ratio. Like the Moon, Charon keeps the same face towards Pluto all the time (geosynchronous orbit).

This Uranus moon's surface is dark and only reflects 10% of the light that it recieves from Uranus and the Sun. Why is unknown. Geological activity ended earlier here than the other moons, meaning more craters.

Another Uranus moon that used to be active but is not anymore. Has some areas where craters are still filled in. It is Uranus's brightest moon.

Satern's moon like its neighbor Rhea. An ice moon with some streaks left over from early geologic ice volcanoes.

Another Saturnian ice moon with some rock. Same density as water, but this one has a massive crater that almost destroyed it.

This is the biggest astroid in the solar system. Shaped like a planet, it orbits the sun with the rest of the astroids (shaped like potatoes). Maybe we should rename it Krypton.

This moon of Saturn is the brightest object in the Solar System except the sun because it is very white with an icy and rocky exterior.

 The interior is active, probably with a kind of ice volcano like on Triton.

This formerly geologically active moon of Uranus has the most bizarre topography because early on an asteroid smashed into it, destroyed it and yet it reassembled. So its surface isn't all craters or all ice or all ridges or all anything, it is all mixed up.

The darkest moon in the solar system, Proteus' surface gives off 6% of the light it gets (not much) from Neptune and the Sun. It has been beaten senseless by small wandering objects and has many craters.

This rock moon of Saturn was almost destroyed armaggedon style but barely survived. Now it has a 90 mile gorge in it that makes the whole moon look like the Death Star from Star Wars.

A potato moon around Neptune, it has the most erratic orbit of anything in the solar system. Sometimes it is 700,000 miles from Neptune, sometimes 3,000,000.

A weird orbiting irregular moon of Saturn, strangest but for Nereid, it weaves too and fro as it travels around the planet. NASA thinks it may have been the remnant of a moon that was obliterated to help form the rings.

This 5th largest moon of Jupiter is only 1/15 the size of the 4th. It is the reddest object in the solar system, red geologically active rock mixed with receiving more red dust from Io's volcanoes as a coating.

Both of Mars' moons were originally asteroids. They were caught by Mars' gravity early on and became moons. Phobos was almost destroyed once and has the massive scar to prove it.

If people ever landed on Mars' smaller moon, they would have to bring a large broom. It is smooth from the fine particles of destroyed material that something that hit it turned in to.

Here they are all on the chart for better comparison.

There are other 'moons' in our solar system but they are all unremarkable. They are all very tiny irregular, and reflect very little light. The only potential use they would have is to be mined in the future for any valuable minerals they may have on them. Becides the ones listed above, Jupiter leads all others with 56. Saturn has 23, Uranus 22 and Neptune has 9. So, in the Solar System as a whole, there are 140 moons, of which, 25 are significant.

New******See just the planets and moons in their original positions!******New

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