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OUR SOLAR SYSTEM: IN DEPTH

Overview
A solar system is a star and all of the objects that
travel around it — planets, moons, asteroids,
comets and meteoroids. Most stars host their
own planets, so there are likely tens of billions of
other solar systems in the Milky Way galaxy
alone. Solar systems can also have more than one
star. These are called binary star systems if there
are two stars, or multi-star systems if there are three or more stars.

The solar system we call home is located in an outer spiral arm of the vast Milky Way
galaxy. It consists of the sun (our star) and everything that orbits around it.

1 Our solar system formed about 4.6 billion years ago.

2 The four planets closest to the sun -- Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars.
3 The sun is the center of our solar system. It contains almost all of the mass in our solar system.

Size and Distance

The solar system extends much farther than the eight planets that orbit the sun. The
solar system also includes the Kuiper Belt that lies past Neptune's orbit. This is a
sparsely occupied ring of icy bodies, almost all smaller than the most popular Kuiper
Belt Object, dwarf planet Pluto.
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Exploration
In the early 17th century, Galileo Galilei's discoveries using the recently invented
telescope strongly supported the concept of a solar system in which all the planets,
including Earth, revolve around a central star — the sun. At the time this was called
Copernican heliocentric theory, and it was a revolutionary idea, as most people
thought Earth was the center of the universe.

Since then, we have learned much about our solar system and what lies beyond it
using ground-based telescopes, spacecraft and mathematical models. The Voyager
mission made an impact in a lot of areas of planetary science.

Significant Dates

The following table lists statistical information for the Sun and planets:

Distance Radius Mass Rotation Moons Inclination Obliquity Density

Sun 0 109 332,800 25-36* 9 --- --- 1.410

Mercury 0.39 0.38 0.05 58.8 0 7 0.1° 5.43

Venus 0.72 0.95 0.89 244 0 3.394 177.4° 5.25

Earth 1.0 1.00 1.00 1.00 1 0.000 23.45° 5.52

Mars 1.5 0.53 0.11 1.029 2 1.850 25.19° 3.95

Jupiter 5.2 11 318 0.411 16 1.308 3.12° 1.33

Saturn 9.5 9 95 0.428 18 2.488 26.73° 0.69

Neptune 30.1 4 17 0.802 8 1.774 29.56° 1.64

Pluto 39.5 0.18 0.002 0.267 1 17.15 119.6° 2.03

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Sun Mercury Venus Earth