There are eight planets in the Solar System: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Pluto was counted as the ninth until 2006, when it was reclassified as a dwarf planet. Below is a fact file for each planet, plus free printable fact-file sheets for your class.
Distances are averages in astronomical units (AU) — 1 AU is the Earth–Sun distance, about 150 million km. A handy mnemonic for the order: My Very Excellent Mother Just Served Us Noodles.
Rounded, classroom-safe values — distances are averages, and the giant planets' moon counts are confirmed minimums, because astronomers keep finding more.
The smallest planet and the fastest around the Sun — yet not the hottest. With almost no atmosphere to trap heat, it swings from about 430°C in the day to −180°C at night.
The hottest planet: thick clouds of carbon dioxide trap heat at around 465°C — hot enough to melt lead. It also spins backwards, so the Sun rises in the west.
The only place we know of with life. About 71% of the surface is ocean — which is why Earth looks blue from space.
The Red Planet — rusty iron dust colors the whole surface. It has the largest volcano in the Solar System, Olympus Mons, nearly three times the height of Mount Everest.
The biggest planet: more than 1,300 Earths could fit inside. Its Great Red Spot is a storm wider than Earth that has raged for centuries.
Famous for its rings — billions of pieces of ice and rock, some as small as dust, some as big as houses. Saturn is so light for its size that it would float in a big enough bathtub.
The sideways planet: it rotates tipped over at almost 98°, probably after a giant collision long ago — so each pole gets about 42 years of sunlight, then 42 years of darkness.
The windiest planet, with gusts over 2,000 km/h — and the first planet found by maths: astronomers predicted where it must be before anyone saw it through a telescope in 1846.
Each button prints just that sheet (or saves it as a PDF) — clean black-and-white pages that photocopy perfectly.
A one-page template a student completes for a single planet — name, type, distance, day length, moons, a drawing box and three facts of their own.
Choose one planet. Research it, then fill in every box.
Planet name:
Type (rocky / gas giant / ice giant):
Distance from the Sun:
How long is a day?
How long is a year?
Number of moons:
Position from the Sun (1st–8th):
Draw your planet here
Three amazing facts about my planet:
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Free from kuraplan.com/planet-facts — Name: ____________________ Date: ____________
All eight planets on one page: type, distance from the Sun, size, day, year and moons. The wall chart and folder reference for a space unit.
In order from the Sun. Distances and sizes are rounded average values.
| Planet | Type | Distance from Sun | Diameter | Day | Year | Moons |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mercury | Rocky | 58 million km | 4,879 km | 59 Earth days* | 88 Earth days | 0 |
| Venus | Rocky | 108 million km | 12,104 km | 243 Earth days | 225 Earth days | 0 |
| Earth | Rocky | 150 million km | 12,742 km | 24 hours | 365¼ days | 1 |
| Mars | Rocky | 228 million km | 6,779 km | 24.6 hours | 687 Earth days | 2 |
| Jupiter | Gas giant | 778 million km | 139,820 km | 10 hours | 12 Earth years | 90+ |
| Saturn | Gas giant | 1.4 billion km | 116,460 km | 10.7 hours | 29 Earth years | 140+ |
| Uranus | Ice giant | 2.9 billion km | 50,724 km | 17 hours | 84 Earth years | 27+ |
| Neptune | Ice giant | 4.5 billion km | 49,244 km | 16 hours | 165 Earth years | 16+ |
*One spin of Mercury takes 59 Earth days; a full day–night cycle takes about 176. Moon counts for the giant planets are confirmed minimums — astronomers keep finding more.
Free from kuraplan.com/planet-facts — Name: ____________________ Date: ____________
Students write the eight planets in order from the Sun using the word bank — the classic end-of-unit check, with a line to write the mnemonic.
Write the eight planets in order from the Sun. Use the word bank to help you.
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Challenge:write a silly sentence to help you remember the order — each word should start with a planet's first letter. (Example: My Very Excellent Mother Just Served Us Noodles.)
Free from kuraplan.com/planet-facts — Name: ____________________ Date: ____________
A fact file works because it gives research a shape. Instead of "find out about Jupiter", students hunt for six specific answers — type, distance, size, day, year, moons — and then choose their own three standout facts. The hunt for the standout facts is where the real reading happens.
A classic unit shape: start with the planets-in-order sheet and a class mnemonic, use the reference table on this page (or the printable version) as the shared source of truth, then assign each student or pair one planet for the fill-in-the-blanks fact file. The finished files make an instant classroom display — all eight planets, researched by the class itself.
One teaching note worth pre-empting: the giant planets' moon counts are moving targets. Jupiter and Saturn gain newly confirmed moons almost every year — which is itself a great lesson in how science works. That's why the sheets say "90+" rather than a precise number.
There are eight planets in the Solar System: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. There were nine until 2006, when Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet — so any answer of eight or nine depends on when the book was printed, and eight is the current one.
In order from the Sun: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune. The first four are small rocky planets; beyond the asteroid belt come the four giants — Jupiter and Saturn (gas giants), then Uranus and Neptune (ice giants).
In 2006 the International Astronomical Union agreed that a planet must do three things: orbit the Sun, be big enough for gravity to pull it into a round shape, and have cleared its orbit of other objects. Pluto passes the first two but not the third — it shares its neighbourhood with many other icy bodies in the Kuiper Belt — so it was reclassified as a dwarf planet, alongside Eris, Ceres, Haumea and Makemake.
Jupiter is the biggest planet — about 139,820 km across, wide enough to fit more than 1,300 Earths inside. Mercury is the smallest at 4,879 km across, only a little larger than our Moon.
Use a mnemonic — a silly sentence where each word starts with a planet's first letter. The classic is "My Very Excellent Mother Just Served Us Noodles" (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune). Even better, have students invent their own — a sentence they wrote themselves is the one they remember.
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