name Brief description age Mass Equatorial Type of Elemental composition No.

of
diameter planet moons

jupiter The largest planet in the solar system – more than twice as massive as 4.503 mass of 1.9 x 142,800 Gas giant hydrogen and helium, with small 79
all the other planets combined. It has a diameter more than ten times b yrs 1027 kg (approx. kilometers amounts of methane, ammonia,
that of earth. In brightness, it is second only to Venus. Fifth in line 318x the mass of (88,736 water vapor and other
from the Sun. Jupiter's familiar stripes and swirls are actually cold, Earth) miles) compounds
windy clouds of ammonia and water, floating in an atmosphere of
hydrogen and helium. Jupiter’s iconic Great Red Spot is a giant storm
bigger than Earth that has raged for hundreds of years.
saturn Saturn is a gas-giant planet and therefore does not have a solid surface 4.503 mass is 5.688 x 119,300 Gas giant hydrogen and helium, but there is 62
like Earth’s. But it might have a solid core somewhere in there. It has b yrs 1026 kg (approx. kilometers also ice of ammonia, ice of
three rings revolving around it’s center. These rings are made up of 95x the mass of (74,130 methane and water ice.
countless small particles of matter . Saturn's volume is greater than Earth) miles)
760 Earths, and it is the second most massive planet in the solar
system, about 95 times Earth's mass. The Ringed Planet is the least
dense of all the planets, and is the only one less dense than water.

uranus Can be seen with the naked eye only under the most ideal conditions 4.503b mass is 8.686 x 51,800 Ice Giant In April 2017, a global research 27
Uranus is an ice giant. Most of its mass is a hot, dense fluid of "icy" yrs 1025 kg (approx. kilometers team found hydrogen sulfide ( the
materials – water, methane and ammonia – above a small rocky core. 14.5x the mass of (32,190 odiferous gas that most
Uranus was discovered in 1781 by astronomer William Herschel. The Earth ) miles) people avoid). Uranus has an
planet was named for Uranus, the Greek god of the sky, as suggested atmosphere made mostly of
by Johann Bode. molecular hydrogen and atomic
helium, with a small amount of
methane.
neptune Neptune is the eighth and most distant planet in our solar system. The 4.503 1,024 x 1026 kg 49,500 Ice Giant Atmosphere is made from about 14
only planet in our solar system not visible to the naked eye. It’s orbit is b yrs (approx. 17x the kilometers 80% hydrogen and 19% helium.
so large that a single year on the planet (that is, the period of one mass of Earth (30,760 It also contains a small amount
revolution about the sun ) twice as long as the average human lifetime. miles). water and methane, which give
rise to the green-bluish color. The
dark blue and bright white
features of the atmosphere help
distinguish Neptune from Uranus.
The thin cirrus-like white clouds
contain methane ice.

pluto Pluto is the largest and second-most-massive (after Eris) known dwarf 4.46 to 1.31 x 2,376.6 Dwarf Pluto's atmosphere is roughly 5
planet in the Solar System, and the ninth-largest and tenth-most- 4.6 b 1022 kilograms kilometer Planet 90% Nitrogen, and 10% other
massive known object directly orbiting the Sun. It is the largest known years complex molecules such as
trans-Neptunian object by volume but is less massive than Eris. methane.
Classified as a major planet for 76 years but has been classified to a
dwarf planet because it does not dominate its neighborhood.
Jovian planets are named after Jupiter, the largest planet in the Solar System. They are also called the gas planets because they consist mainly of hydrogen, or the giant planets because of
their size. These planets usually have complicated system of many moons and often even rings of ice and/or dust. Rather than having thin atmospheres around relatively large rocky bodies,
the jovian planets have relatively small, dense cores surrounded by massive layers of gas. Made almost entirely of hydrogen and helium, these planets do not have solid surfaces.

Why can’t Jovian planet support life?

Even if we assume any habitable planet must be Earth-like (and it may not be), chances are we're not alone. Astrobiologists estimate that the Milky Way has 500 habitable planets, which fit
the following criteria:
 They're a comfortable distance away from a star similar to our sun. That is, they're far enough away to be out of the heavy heat and radiation zone, but not so far that they're
extremely cold. This just-right distance is called the "habitable zone."
 They're made of rock. Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus in our solar system are made of gases, so we don't expect life to be able to survive there.
 They're big enough to have a molten core. Earth's core gives us a source of geothermal energy, it allows cycling of raw materials, and it sets up a magnetic field around the planet that
protects us from radiation. Mars probably had a hot liquid core at one time, but because it's a smaller planet its heat dissipated more quickly.
 They are good candidates for having a protective atmosphere. The atmosphere holds carbon dioxide and other gases that keep the planet warm and protect its surface from
radiation.

Pluto is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt, a ring of bodies beyond Neptune. It was the first Kuiper belt object to be discovered and is the largest known plutoid (or ice dwarf).

Why can’t Pluto support life?

The atmosphere undergoes transitions as Pluto gets closer and farther away from the Sun. Basically, when Pluto is at perihelion, the atmosphere freezes solid; when it is at aphelion, the
surface temperature increases, causing the ices to sublimate. As such, there is simply no way life could survive on the surface of Pluto. Between the extreme cold, low atmospheric pressure,
and constant changes in the atmosphere, no known organism could survive. However, that does not rule out the possibility of life being found inside the planet.

Asteroids are small bodies that believed to be left over from the beginning of the solar system 4.6 billion years ago. They are rocky objects with round or irregular shapes up to several
hundred km across, but most are much smaller. More than 100,000 asteroids lie in a belt between Mars and Jupiter. These asteroids lie in a location in the solar system where there seems to
be a jump in the spacing between the planets. Scientists think that this debris may be the remains of an early planet, which broke up early in the solar system. Several thousand of the largest
asteroids in this belt have been given names. The chances of an asteroid colliding with Earth are very small! But some do come close to Earth, like Hermes (closest approach of 777,000 km).

Elemental composition
An asteroid’s composition is mainly determined by how close it is to the Sun. The asteroids that are nearest the Sun are mostly made of carbon, with smaller amounts of nitrogen, hydrogen
and oxygen, while the ones further away are made up of silicate rock. Silicates are very common on Earth and in the Solar System. They are made up of oxygen and silicon, the number one
and number two most abundant elements in the Earth’s crust. The metallic asteroids are composed of up to 80% iron and 20% a mixture of nickel, iridium, palladium, platinum, gold,
magnesium and other precious metals such as osmium, ruthenium and rhodium. There are a few that are made up of half silicate and half metallic.

How the asteroids originated?

During the chaotic, fiery days of the early Solar System, debris was constantly crashing together and so small grains became small rocks, which crashed into other rocks to form bigger ones.
Some of debris was shattered remnants of planetesimals – bodies within the young Sun’s solar nebula that never grew large enough to become planets — and large collisions
pulverized these planetesimals while other debris never came together due to the massive gravitational pull from Jupiter.

Types of Asteroids
 Dark C (carbonaceous) asteroids, which make up most asteroids and are in the outer belt. They’re believed to be close to the Sun’s composition, with little hydrogen or helium or
other “volatile” elements.
 Bright S (silicaceous) asteroids and are in the inner belt, closer to Mars. They tend to be metallic iron with some silicates of iron and magnesium.
 Bright M (metallic) asteroids. They sit in the middle of the asteroid belt and are mostly made up of metallic iron.
 D type, known as the Trojan asteroids of Jupiter and are dark and carbonaceous in nature.
 V type that are distant asteroids between the orbits of Jupiter and Uranus, and they may have originated in the Kuiper Belt.
How Pluto Got its Name?
Pluto is the only world (so far) named by an 11-year-old girl. In 1930, Venetia Burney of Oxford, England, suggested to her grandfather that the new discovery be named for the Roman god of
the underworld. He forwarded the name to the Lowell Observatory and it was selected. Pluto's moons are named for other mythological figures associated with the underworld. Charon is
named for the river Styx boatman who ferries souls in the underworld (as well as honoring Sharon, the wife of discoverer James Christy); Nix is named for the mother of Charon, who is also
the goddess of darkness and night; Hydra is named for the nine-headed serpent that guards the underworld; Kerberos is named after the three-headed dog of Greek mythology (and called
Fluffy in the Harry Potter novels); and Styx is named for the mythological river that separates the world of the living from the realm of the dead.Pluto's place in mythology can get a little
muddled, so we asked Dr. Elizabeth Vandiver, chair of the Department of Classics in Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, to clarify the origins of the name: "Pluto is the name of the
Roman god of the Underworld, equivalent to the Greek Hades. However, the Greek name "Plouton" (from which the Romans derived their name "Pluto") was also occasionally used as an
alternative name for Hades. But Pluto is definitely the Roman spelling."Pluto was discovered by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930 and was originally considered to be the ninth planet from the Sun.
After 1992, its status as a planet was questioned following the discovery of several objects of similar size in the Kuiper belt. In 2005, Eris, a dwarf planet in the scattered disc which is 27%
more massive than Pluto, was discovered. This led the International Astronomical Union (IAU) to define the term "planet" formally in 2006, during their 26th General Assembly. That
definition excluded Pluto and reclassified it as a dwarf planet.

Why pluto is no longer a planet?

Because the distant, ice-covered world is no longer a true planet, according to a new definition of the term voted on by scientists today.
According to the new definition, a full-fledged planet is an object that orbits the sun and is large enough to have become round due to the force of its own gravity. In addition, a planet has
to dominate the neighborhood around its orbit.