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An ice giant is a giant planet composed mainly of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium, such as oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur. There are two ice giants in the Solar System: Uranus and Neptune. In astrophysics and planetary science the term "ice" refers to volatile chemical compounds with freezing points above about 100 K, such as ...
A gas giant is a giant planet composed mainly of hydrogen and helium. [1] Jupiter and Saturn are the gas giants of the Solar System. The term "gas giant" was originally synonymous with "giant planet". However, in the 1990s, it became known that Uranus and Neptune are really a distinct class of giant planets, being composed mainly of heavier ...
Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun. It is a gaseous cyan -coloured ice giant. Most of the planet is made of water, ammonia, and methane in a supercritical phase of matter, which astronomy calls "ice" or volatiles. The planet's atmosphere has a complex layered cloud structure and has the lowest minimum temperature (49 K (−224 °C; − ...
The ice giants Uranus and Neptune live up to their name. Although humans have only ever sent one spacecraft (Voyager 2) toward these far-flung worlds, scientists have a pretty good idea that these ...
The light blue dot represents Uranus. The average distance between Neptune and the Sun is 4.5 billion km (about 30.1 astronomical units (AU), the mean distance from the Earth to the Sun), and it completes an orbit on average every 164.79 years, subject to a variability of around ±0.1 years. The perihelion distance is 29.81 AU, and the aphelion ...
Jupiter and Saturn are principally made of hydrogen and helium, whilst Uranus and Neptune consist of water, ammonia, and methane. The defining differences between a very low-mass brown dwarf and a massive gas giant (~13 M J) are debated. One school of thought is based on planetary formation; the other, on the physics of the interior of planets.
The original core of the Nice model is a triplet of papers published in the general science journal Nature in 2005 by an international collaboration of scientists. [4] [5] [6] In these publications, the four authors proposed that after the dissipation of the gas and dust of the primordial Solar System disk, the four giant planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune) were originally found on ...
Main article: Solar System. According to the IAU definition, there are eight planets in the Solar System, which are (in increasing distance from the Sun):[2]Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Jupiter is the largest, at 318 Earth masses, whereas Mercury is the smallest, at 0.055 Earth masses.