Cart

Planet Temperatures & Atmospheres Training Center

Ari Raider's Training Materials · Outer Space Odyssey · Training Center 2 of 6

Planet Temperatures & Atmospheres

Crossing the Burning Rim means stepping the planets in temperature order — and the order hides a surprise: closer to the Sun does not mean hotter.

What you're training for

At the Burning Rim, every stone is too hot to hold. It cools behind whoever can rank the planets from hottest surface to coldest — and explain the upset at the top. Train here first; prove it in the simulation.

The science

  • The order: Venus (~465°C), then Mercury (~167°C), then Earth (~15°C), then Mars (~−60°C).
  • The upset: Venus is farther from the Sun than Mercury — and still far hotter.
  • The reason: Venus wears a thick carbon dioxide atmosphere that traps heat and never lets it go — a runaway greenhouse. Mercury, nearly airless, lets its heat escape every night.
  • The lesson under the lesson: a planet's blanket matters as much as its distance — which is also why Earth's atmosphere is worth paying attention to.

Teach it today — two jars and a sunny sill

The jar greenhouse. Two jars in the sun, a thermometer in each, one sealed with plastic wrap. Check them after an hour: the covered jar runs hotter — the wrap is Venus's atmosphere. Then rank the four planet cards hottest to coldest and let students argue Venus vs Mercury before revealing the numbers.

Trained and ready? Prove it at Stop 2 — the Burning Rim. Free, no logins, progress saved on the device.

Enter the Realm at Stop 2

Resources in this training center

Worksheets, reading passages, flashcards and printables for this lesson are being added — new resources land here first. Get one email a month when they do, or browse the whole free library.

The hands-on half: the Outer Space Odyssey Adventure Kit puts six real specimens, six Digs, six Gemlings and the Realm map in your students' hands — $19.99, or $15 a student for classrooms.

More Outer Space Odyssey training

Mars & Surfaces · Planet Temperatures · Light & Shadow · Solar System Formation · Space Rocks · Comets · Enter the Adventure →

Back to top