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There are eight planets within the Solar System; planets outside of the solar system are also known as exoplanets. Artist's concept of the potentially habitable exoplanet Kepler-186f. As of 6 March 2025, there are 5,849 confirmed exoplanets in 4,367 planetary systems, with 981 systems having more than one planet. [1]
There is strong consensus among astronomers that five members of the Kuiper belt are dwarf planets. [198] [203] Many dwarf planet candidates are being considered, pending further data for verification. [204] Pluto (29.7–49.3 AU) is the largest known object in the Kuiper belt.
[18] [19] Thereafter there still may be many protoplanets orbiting the star or each other, but over time many will collide, either to form a larger, combined protoplanet or release material for other protoplanets to absorb. [20] Those objects that have become massive enough will capture most matter in their orbital neighbourhoods to become planets.
Many trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) have been discovered; in many cases their positions in this list are approximate, as there is frequently a large uncertainty in their estimated diameters due to their distance from Earth. Solar System objects more massive than 10 21 kilograms are known or expected to be approximately spherical.
From the total of 5,086 stars known to have exoplanets (as of January 26, 2024), there are a total of 1,033 known multiplanetary systems, [1] or stars with at least two confirmed planets, beyond the Solar System. This list includes systems with at least three confirmed planets or two confirmed planets where additional candidates have been proposed.
Π > 1 indicates a planet, and there is again a gap of several orders of magnitude between planets and dwarf planets. There are several other schemes that try to differentiate between planets and dwarf planets, [ 23 ] but the 2006 definition uses this concept.
There is also a speculative list being developed of superhabitable planets. Surface planetary habitability is thought to require an orbit at the right distance from the host star for liquid surface water to be present, in addition to various geophysical and geodynamical aspects, atmospheric density, radiation type and intensity, and the host ...
A class of extrasolar planets whose characteristics are similar to Jupiter, but that have high surface temperatures because they orbit very close—between approximately 0.015 and 0.5 AU (2.2 × 10 ^ 6 and 74.8 × 10 ^ 6 km)—to their parent stars, whereas Jupiter orbits its parent star (the Sun) at 5.2 AU (780 × 10 ^ 6 km), causing low ...