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Mars comes closer to Earth more than any other planet save Venus at its nearest—56 million km is the closest distance between Mars and Earth, whereas the closest Venus comes to Earth is 40 million km. Mars comes closest to Earth every other year, around the time of its opposition, when Earth is sweeping between the Sun and Mars. Extra-close ...
In the special case of perfectly circular orbits, the semimajor axis a is equal to the radius of the orbit, and the orbital velocity is constant and equal to = where: r is the circular orbit's radius in meters, This corresponds to 1 ⁄ √2 times (≈ 0.707 times) the escape velocity.
The axial tilt of Jupiter is 3.13°, which is relatively small, so its seasons are insignificant compared to those of Earth and Mars. [ 134 ] Jupiter's rotation is the fastest of all the Solar System's planets, completing a rotation on its axis in slightly less than ten hours; this creates an equatorial bulge easily seen through an amateur ...
According to the IAU's explicit count, there are eight planets in the Solar System; four terrestrial planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars) and four giant planets, which can be divided further into two gas giants (Jupiter and Saturn) and two ice giants (Uranus and Neptune). When excluding the Sun, the four giant planets account for more than ...
Neptune's bow shock, where the magnetosphere begins to slow the solar wind, occurs at a distance of 34.9 times the radius of the planet. The magnetopause, where the pressure of the magnetosphere counterbalances the solar wind, lies at a distance of 23–26.5 times the radius of Neptune. The tail of the magnetosphere extends out to at least 72 ...
Mars is located closer to the asteroid belt, so it has an increased chance of being struck by materials from that source. Mars is more likely to be struck by short-period comets, i.e., those that lie within the orbit of Jupiter. [103] Martian craters can have a morphology that suggests the ground became wet after the meteor impact. [104]
The closest in the past 1,000 years was in 1761, when Mars and Jupiter appeared to the naked eye as a single bright object, according to Giorgini. Looking ahead, the year 2348 will be almost as close.
An important understanding to be drawn from this table is that "Sphere of Influence" here is "Primary". For example, though Jupiter is much larger in mass than say, Neptune, its Primary SOI is much smaller due to Jupiter's much closer proximity to the Sun.