Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The planets are, in order of distance from the Sun: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. There are three main belts of minor bodies: The asteroid belt, between Mars and Jupiter. The Kuiper belt beyond Neptune, followed by the scattered disc. The Oort cloud in the boundaries of the Solar System.
"Inferior planet" refers to Mercury and Venus, which are closer to the Sun than Earth is. "Superior planet" refers to Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune (the latter two added later), which are further from the Sun than Earth is. The terms are sometimes used more generally; for example, Earth is an inferior planet relative to Mars.
The outer planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, compared to the inner planets Earth, Venus, Mars, and Mercury at the bottom right The four outer planets, called giant planets or Jovian planets, collectively make up 99% of the mass orbiting the Sun. [ h ] All four giant planets have multiple moons and a ring system, although only Saturn's ...
Notorious examples are the great Venus term and the Jupiter–Saturn great inequality. Looking up the revolution periods of these planets, one may notice that 8 × (period of Earth) is almost equal to 13 × (period of Venus) and 5 × (period of Jupiter) is about 2 × (period of Saturn).
The Galilean satellites show a similar trend going outwards from Jupiter; however, no such trend is observable for the icy satellites of Saturn or Uranus. [12] The icy worlds typically have densities less than 2 g·cm −3. Eris is significantly denser (2.43 ± 0.05 g·cm −3), and may be mostly rocky with some surface ice, like Europa. [2]
However, this is an imperfect metaphor as expected, due to the large differences in sizes, temperature, and composition between Earth and the gas giants, and even between gas giants. Polar vortices were observed on Venus and Saturn. In turn, Earth's thinner atmosphere shows weaker polar vorticity and effects.
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. [29]
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 ...