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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 ...
The bow shock forms the outermost layer of the magnetosphere; the boundary between the magnetosphere and the ambient medium. For stars, this is usually the boundary between the stellar wind and interstellar medium; for planets, the speed of the solar wind there decreases as it approaches the magnetopause. [6]
The magnetosphere of Saturn is the cavity created in the flow of the solar wind by the planet's internally generated magnetic field. Discovered in 1979 by the Pioneer 11 spacecraft, Saturn's magnetosphere is the second largest of any planet in the Solar System after Jupiter .
The Sun and planets of the Solar System (distances not to scale). The Solar System is the gravitationally bound system of the Sun and the objects that orbit it. It formed about 4.6 billion years ago when a dense region of a molecular cloud collapsed, forming the Sun and a protoplanetary disc.
A magnetosphere is a region of space surrounding a planet where the planet's magnetic field dominates, creating a protective zone against solar and cosmic particle radiation.
Three of the four inner planets (Venus, Earth, and Mars) have atmospheres substantial enough to generate weather; all have impact craters and tectonic surface features, such as rift valleys and volcanoes. [91] Mercury (0.31–0.59 AU from the Sun) [D 6] is the smallest planet in the Solar System.
The planets' orbits are chaotic over longer time scales, in such a way that the whole Solar System possesses a Lyapunov time in the range of 2~230 million years. [3] In all cases, this means that the positions of individual planets along their orbits ultimately become impossible to predict with any certainty.
The Ganymedian magnetosphere has a region of closed field lines located below 30° latitude, where charged particles (electrons and ions) are trapped, creating a kind of radiation belt. [96] The main ion species in the magnetosphere is single ionized oxygen [24] (O +) which fits well with Ganymede's tenuous oxygen atmosphere.