Solar System

You've likely already heard of the Solar System and have likely accustomed themselves to the planets that are orbiting in it. However, what exactly is the Solar System? In more scientific terms, the Solar System is the gravitationally bound system comprising of the Sun and all of the objects that orbit it. At first glance, this simple definition may make it seem like the Solar System is just the Sun and the eight planets. However, the solar system also includes objects that indirectly orbit the Sun, including the moons of every planet(like Earth's moon), the asteroid belt, and objects like Pluto and Eris.

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The first four planets(Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars) are all terrestrial planets, meaning they have solid rocky, mountainous, and even metallic surfaces. However, these planets are very small relative to the next four planets.

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The next two planets(Jupiter and Saturn) are known as gas giants. These planets hold very dense cores and the composition of these planets are very gaseous and liquid with many cloud layers composed of water and ice.

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For the semi-major axes of the planets, the units are in AU, or astronomical units. 1 AU is defined as the average distance between the Sun and Earth, which is about 150,000,000 km.

Below are the topics for this section:

Sun

Mercury

Venus

Earth

Mars

Asteroid Belt

Jupiter

Saturn

Uranus

Neptune

Pluto