Thursday, December 6, 2018

Remembering the Order of the Planets

Since a kid, I lovingly referred to the following mnemonic device when I was trying to remember the physical order of the planets in the solar system:

My Very Excellent Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas
Mars, Venus, Earth, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto

That's a lot of pizza. Everyone who learned the planetary order in this way must have had a fantastic pizza party! Alas, Pluto is now considered not to be an official planet anymore; it is generally classified as a dwarf or minor planet at best. Therefore, the mnemonic below is now my go-to whenever I think Earth is closer to the Sun than Venus:

My Very Excellent Mother Just Served Us Noodles*
* Or, depending on where you live in the world, feel free to substitute noodles (or nachos) for any food starting with the letter N!

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Blog Background

The background has three Hubble Space Telescope images:

— LH 95 is a star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud, Dorado constellation.

— Ant Nebula (also called Menzel 3) is an aptly-named planetary nebula located in the constellation Norma.

— Egg Nebula (also called CL 2688) is a protoplanetary nebula in the constellation Cygnus.