The Outer Giants: Worlds of Gas and Ice

Once you pass the asteroid belt, the planets change completely. There is no more rock; just thousands of kilometers of gas and liquid.

**Jupiter** is the king of the planets. It is so large that all the other planets could fit inside it twice. Through a small telescope, you can see its four largest moons (the Galilean moons) looking like tiny diamonds in a line.

**Saturn** is the “Jewel of the Solar System.” Everyone remembers the first time they saw Saturn’s rings through a telescope. The rings are made of billions of tiny pieces of ice and rock, some as small as dust and others as big as mountains.

**Uranus and Neptune** are much further away. They are blue because of methane gas in their atmospheres. They are much harder to find and require a good telescope and a dark sky, but Neptune is the only planet that was discovered using math before it was actually seen!