Earth has lots of different types of weather. Rain, wind, sun, hail, snow, fog, smog, thunder, hurricanes, clouds…

Did you know planets also have their own types of weather?!

Have you ever wondered:

Does it snow on Mercury?
Is it raining on Venus?
Do other planets have clouds?
What’s the weather like on Mars?

Let’s take a tour of our solar system and find out all about the different types of space weather there are on other planets!

Mercury

Since Mercury has hardly any atmosphere, it does not have weather like storms, clouds, winds or rain!

But the surface of Mercury can reach 427 degrees during the day (because it is so close to the Sun) and can drop to -187 at night (because there is no atmosphere to trap the daytime heat).

Venus

Venus has some of the coolest weather of any planet!

On the surface, the planet roasts at more than 450 degrees under a suffocating blanket of acid clouds and a crushing atmosphere more than 90 times the pressure of Earth’s.

Mars

Mars is much colder than Earth. The average temperature varies from -20º to a comfortable 20º!

Mars’ atmosphere consists of 95% carbon dioxide, 3% nitrogen, 1.6% argon, and the remainder is trace amounts of oxygen, water vapour, and other gases.

Jupiter

Jupiter experiences storms that can grow to thousands of miles in diameter in the space of a few hours!

The planet also experiences windstorms, lightning, and auroras in some areas. In fact, the weather on Jupiter is so extreme that it can be seen from space!

Saturn

Saturn has violent electrical storms that produce huge amounts of energy!

Jupiter has something known as the ‘Great Red Spot’, which is a big storm! Saturn has something similar, known as the ‘Great White Spot’!

Neptune

Neptune has the weirdest weather in the whole solar system! It varies so much!

Its atmosphere has dark spots which come and go. These are like clouds, which change very rapidly! It’s also very cold on Neptune at -214º!

If you want to find out more about space weather, you should check out Deep Space High: Intergalactic Weather Watch! Sam, Stats, and Quark are all taught about solar flares, cosmic rays, coronal mass ejections and more!