Question: if you had a choice to study about planets which one would you chose saturn, mars, jupiter, pluto or ceres?

Sam Connolly answered on 13 Jun 2014:

Tough question! There’re all pretty interesting, but in totally different ways…

Pluto and Ceres, you might know, are technically dwarf planets, as opposed to proper planets. They’re pretty much just big rocks, because they aren’t big enough to have an atmosphere, BUT they’re very interesting for working out how all the planets in the Solar system formed – they’re essentially the left over bits of planet that either never made it to being a proper planet, or were part of a bigger almost-planet that hit another one and broke apart at some point early in the history of the solar system.

Mars is interesting because it’s fairly similar to Earth and was once much more similar, with rivers and oceans. It’s also one of the closer planets, so we might actually have a reasonable chance of a person getting there reasonably soon, which is exciting.

Jupiter is interesting because it’s so big and has such a big effect on the solar system. Because it has such strong gravity, it deflects a lot of asteroids that might otherwise hit the earth. It’s surface is an amazing, constantly changing mix of different coloured gases, including the great red spot, which is a giant hurricane storm that has been going on for over four hundred years – it’s so big you could fit two Earths just inside the storm! It also has loads of moons (more than 60), some of which are the size of small planets – Europa is probably the most interesting moon in the Solar system for me, because it’s the most likely place other than Earth that we could find life.

If I had to choose, I’d probably have to go with Saturn though. I think it’s the most beautiful planet by far, with the same swirling gases as Jupiter, but with the incredible rings which surround it. It also has a lot of interesting moons, and the most interesting thing about it is the way the moons affect the rings. If you look at a good picture of Saturn, you can see gaps in the rings – some of these are because there are little moons going around Saturn inside the rings, which such up all the little bits of rock that make up the rings! There’s a pretty amazing thing going on at the edge of the rings as well – it looks like a new moon is being made from the rocks in the rings slowly clumping together! So definitely Saturn in my opinion!

What would you choose?