Solar System

It sounds strange, but both sets of facts are correct! The reason is that although Mercury spins round once every 56 days, this is not the same as a day (sunrise to sunset). During the time it takes Mercury to rotate it has moved round in its orbit a significant amount, so the Sun is in a different place. The same effect happens here on Earth, but it is less noticable because we have a longer orbital period. This is a bit of a strange concept that takes a bit of getting used to, take a look at this diagram if your still confused.

The closest thing to an overall picture I have on these pages is the scale model page. If you take a look at that you might understand why it is very difficult to see all the planets together, there's a lot of empty space out there!

I'm afraid that my Internet Service Provider is prone to spells of unreliability. If you try again soon, the site isn't usually down for too long. For now you can find a temporary, and slightly out of date (but working) version at: http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/~ppxsjc1/solar/data.html

I'm glad you think so! I've spent quite a lot of time trying to make the website load quickly, by compressing and preloading images, and using simple HTML - I'm glad it's paying off.

I don't really have any information specifically related to the lunar landings. I can recommend a great site about the Moon called Moon-watch.com who may be able to help you.

How long it takes to get somewhere really depends on how faster you are going, but to give you some idea, the Pluto-Kuiper Express mission to Pluto will take around 8-9 years to get there. If you are teaching astronomy with your students at the moment, take a look at The Thousand-Yard Model website for a great idea for a lesson about the size of the solar system - it might give your student an idea why the journey would take so long.

A common mnemonic for remembering the order is My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pickles.

This question really depends on who you talk to. I think that 30 years ago there was a lot of optimism that we would all be living on the Moon by the year 2000, and that clearly hasn't happened. Although there are great technological difficulties to be solved before such a thing becomes possible, there is no real physical reason why we couldn't do it. I think the main barrier at the moment is motivation, there simply isn't enough drive to do something that will invariably be extremely expensive. For more information, have a look at this remarkably detailed course outline, entitled Lunar Base Activation Scenarios - it seems that they have planned it all already!