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A celestial map by the Dutch cartographer Frederik de Wit, 1670. A star chart is a celestial map of the night sky with astronomical objects laid out on a grid system. They are used to identify and locate constellations, stars, nebulae, galaxies, and planets. [1] They have been used for human navigation since time immemorial. [2]
[f] Six planets, seven dwarf planets, and other bodies have orbiting natural satellites, which are commonly called 'moons'. The Solar System is constantly flooded by the Sun's charged particles, the solar wind, forming the heliosphere. Around 75–90 astronomical units from the Sun, [g] the solar wind is halted, resulting in the heliopause.
The equatorial describes the sky as seen from the Solar System, and modern star maps almost exclusively use equatorial coordinates. The equatorial system is the normal coordinate system for most professional and many amateur astronomers having an equatorial mount that follows the movement of the sky during the night. Celestial objects are found ...
The Sun, planets, moons and dwarf planets (true color, size to scale, distances not to scale) The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the Solar System: Solar System – gravitationally bound system comprising the Sun and the objects that orbit it, either directly or indirectly.
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 14 February 2025, there are 5,834 confirmed exoplanets in 4,356 planetary systems , with 977 systems having more than one planet . [ 1 ]
Comparison of the night sky with the night sky of a hypothetical planet within the Milky Way 10 billion years ago, at an age of about 3.6 billion years and 5 billion years before the Sun formed. [261] Globular clusters are among the oldest objects in the Milky Way, which thus set a lower limit on the age of the Milky Way.
Of the Solar System's eight planets and its nine most likely dwarf planets, six planets and seven dwarf planets are known to be orbited by at least 300 natural satellites, or moons. At least 19 of them are large enough to be gravitationally rounded; of these, all are covered by a crust of ice except for Earth's Moon and Jupiter's Io . [ 1 ]
The eight planets of the Solar System with size to scale (up to down, left to right): Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune (outer planets), Earth, Venus, Mars, and Mercury (inner planets) A planet is a large, rounded astronomical body that is generally required to be in orbit around a star, stellar remnant, or brown dwarf, and is not one itself. [1]