EARTH

Earth - our planet - is the only planet in our solar system that is known to have life on it: plants and animals.

When you look at a photo of Earth taken from outer space, the dark areas are oceans, the gray areas are land, the white swirls are clouds, and the large white spot on the bottom is snow-covered Antarctica.

It takes our Earth 365 and 1/4 days to revolve around the sun on a path. We call this a "year." It takes our Earth 24 hours to spin around once. We call this a "day."
When the sun seems to "come up" or "go down," it's not the sun that's moving. It's the Earth turning. Only part of the Earth faces the sun at any moment: "day time." The opposite side of the Earth faces away from the sun: "night time."We seem to be just about the perfect distance from the sun. If our planet was much closer we would broil; much further away from the sun, and we'd freeze.

There is a sort of "blanket of air" surrounding the Earth. This is called "atmosphere." It protects us from the heat and radiation from the sun. The land surface on Earth has mountains, valleys, and plains.

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