Solar System

small part of a giant molecular cloud.[1]

Most of the collapsing mass collected in the centre, forming the Sun, while the rest attened into a protoplanetary disk of loose dust, out of which the planets, moons,
asteroids, and other Solar System bodies formed.
This widely accepted model, known as the nebular
hypothesis, was rst developed in the 18th (1700s)
century by Emanuel Swedenborg, Immanuel Kant, and
Pierre-Simon Laplace. Its subsequent development has
interwoven a variety of scientic disciplines including
astronomy, physics, geology, and planetary science. As
our knowledge of space has grown, the models have been
changed to account for the new observations.

Planets and dwarf planets of the Solar System. Compared with

each other, the sizes are correct, but the distances are not

The Solar System is the Sun and all the objects in orbit The Solar System has evolved considerably since its iniaround it. The Sun is orbited by planets, asteroids, comets tial formation. Many moons have formed from circling
and other things.
discs of gas and dust around their parent planets, while
The Sun is a star. It contains 99.9 percent of the Solar other moons are believed to have formed independently
Systems mass. This means that it has strong gravity. The and later been captured by their planets. Still others, as
the Earth's Moon, may be the result of giant collisions.
other objects are pulled into orbit around the Sun.
Many collisions between bodies have occurred, and have
been important to the evolution of the Solar System. The
positions of the planets often shifted, and planets have
switched places.[2][3] This planetary migration is thought
to have been responsible for much of the Solar Systems
early evolution.

There are eight planets in the Solar System. From closest to farthest from the Sun, they are: Mercury, Venus,
Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. The
rst four planets are called terrestrial planets. They are
mostly made of rock and metal, and they are mostly solid.
The last four planets are called gas giants. This is because
they are large planets that are mostly made of gas. Even
though they are made of gas, they have much more mass
than the terrestrial planets.

2 Earths orbit

The Solar System also contains other things. There are

asteroids, mostly between Mars and Jupiter. Further out
than Neptune, there is the Kuiper belt and the scattered
disc. These areas have dwarf planets, including Pluto.
There are thousands of very small objects in these areas. Also there are also comets, centaurs, and there is
interplanetary dust.

The Earths orbit around the Sun is nearly a perfect circle,

but when mapped it is found that the Earth moves around
the Sun in a very slightly oval shaped, called an elliptical
orbit. The other planets in the Solar System also circle
the Sun in slightly elliptical orbits. Mercury has a more
elliptical orbit than the others, and some of the smaller
Six of the planets and three of the dwarf planets are or- objects orbit the Sun in very eccentric orbits.
bited by moons. Furthermore, planetary dust orbits the
gas giants. There are many other systems like the Solar
System in the universe. Each star has the potential to have
3 Discovery and exploration
a planetary system. There are more than 200 billion stars
in the Milky Way galaxy.
For thousands of years, people had no need for a name for
the Solar System. They thought the Earth stayed still
at the center of everything (geocentrism). Although the
1 Evolution of the Solar System
Greek philosopher Aristarchus of Samos suggested that
there was a special order in the sky,[4] Nicolaus CoperThe formation and evolution of the Solar System began nicus was the rst to develop a mathematical system that
4.6 billion years ago with the gravitational collapse of a described what we now call the solar system. This was
1

6 STRUCTURE

called a new system of the world. In the 17th century, Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler and Isaac Newton
began helping people understand physics more clearly.
This made people slowly accept the idea that the Earth
is a planet and moves around the Sun, and that the planets are worlds with the same physical laws that control
Earth. More recently, telescopes and spacecraft have
led to discoveries of mountains and craters, and seasonal
meteorological phenomena such as clouds, dust storms
and ice caps on the other planets.

5 Dwarf planets
Pluto had been called a planet since it was discovered in 1930, but in 2006 astronomers meeting at the
International Astronomical Union decided on the denition of a planet, and Pluto did not t. Instead they dened
a new category of dwarf planet, into which Pluto did t,
along with some others. These small planets are sometimes called plutinos.
Pluto
Ceres
Haumea
Eris
Makemake

6 Structure
Planetary distances, not to scale

The eight planets

In their order from the Sun:

1. Mercury
2. Venus
3. Earth
4. Mars

There are a few main parts of the Solar System. Here they
are in order from the Sun, with the planets numbered, and
the dwarf planets marked with the letters a - e.
Terrestrial planets region contains the four planets
closest to the sun, all are rocky planets
(1) Mercury
(2) Venus
(3) Earth
(4) Mars
Asteroid belt region contains;
(a) Ceres (the only dwarf planet in this
region)
Asteroids

5. Jupiter
6. Saturn
7. Uranus
8. Neptune

Gas giant planets region contains;

(5) Jupiter
(6) Saturn
(7) Uranus
(8) Neptune

The planets are the biggest objects that go around Sun.

It took people many years of looking carefully through
telescopes to nd the objects that were farthest away. No
one expects to nd new planets, but more small objects
are found every year. Most of the planets have moons
that orbit around them just as the planet orbit the Sun.
There are at least 173 of these moons in the solar system.

Kuiper belt region contains;

(b) Pluto
(c) Haumea
(d) Makemake

6.2

Plane of the ecliptic

Kuiper belt objects and possibly other
dwarf planets
short-period comets

scattered disc region contains;

(e) Eris
Scattered disk objects and possibly other
dwarf planets

3
Sometimes the Outer solar system is taken to mean the
Gas Giant Planets, the Kuiper Belt, and the Scattered
Disk. But with discoveries of many objects in the Kuiper
Belt, and the Scattered Disk, and with more dwarf planet
discoveries, the Outer solar system is now usually dened
more narrowly.
The Oort cloud is separate from the Trans-Neptune region, and much farther out.

6.2 Plane of the ecliptic

Oort cloud region contains
The plane of the ecliptic is dened by the Earths orbit
around the Sun. All of the planets orbit the Sun roughly
around this same plane. The farther away from this plane
a planet orbits, the more inclined is its orbit to the ecliptic.
Inner solar system, Outer solar system, If you could look at the solar system edge on then all
the planets would be orbiting in the plane of the ecliptic
Trans-Neptune region
plane.
long-period comets

6.1

7 References

The inner planets. From left to right: Mercury, Venus, Earth,

and Mars

Sometimes people use alternative names for similar regions dened above. These are less formal, and less well
dened.
Inner solar system contains
Terrestrial planets
Asteroid belt
Outer solar system contains
Gas giant planets

[1] Bouvier, Audrey and Meenakshi Wadhwa, The age of

the solar system redened by the oldest Pb-Pb age of a
meteoritic inclusion. Nature Geoscience, Nature Publishing Group, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited.
Published online 2010-08-22, retrieved 2010-08-26, doi:
10.1038/NGEO941.
Date based on oldest inclusions found to date in
meteorites, thought to be among the rst solid material
to form in the collapsing solar nebula.
[2] R. Gomes, H.F. Levison, K. Tsiganis, A. Morbidelli
(2005). Origin of the cataclysmic Late Heavy Bombardment period of the terrestrial planets (PDF). Nature 435
(7041): 466. . . http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/
v435/n7041/pdf/nature03676.pdf.
[3] A. Morbidelli, J. Chambers, J.I. Lunine, J.M. Petit, F.
Robert, G.B. Valsecchi, K.E. Cyr (2000). Source regions
and timescales for the delivery of water to the Earth. Meteoritics & Planetary Science 35: 1309. .
[4] WC Rufus. The astronomical system of Copernicus.
Popular Astronomy 31: 510. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/
full/1923PA.....31..510R. Retrieved 2009-05-09.

Trans-Neptune region contains

Kuiper belt
Scattered disc
The rst four planets closest to the Sun are called the inner planets. They are small and dense terrestrial planets,
with solid surfaces. They are made up of mostly rock
and metal with a distinct internal structure and a similar
size. Three also have an atmosphere. The study of the
four planets gives information about geology outside the
Earth.

8 More reading
Lang, Kenneth R. (2011). The Cambridge guide to
the Solar System (2nd ed.). Cambridge University
Press. ISBN 9780521198578

9 Other websites
Views of the Solar System

9
Your Weight on Other Worlds
Solar System Citizendium

OTHER WEBSITES

10
10.1

Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

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