Solar System
Our solar system was formed around 4.6 billion years ago. It includes a star, Sun and eight planets and dwarf planets along with some other astronomical objects like: – asteroids, meteoroid, comets, asteroid belt etc. Sun forms about 99.8% of the total mass of this entire solar system. This system has eight planets: – Earth, Saturn, Mars, Jupiter, Neptune, Mercury, Uranus and Venus.
Quick Facts: –
- All eight planets of the solar system are divided in to two categories, inner planets and outer planets.
- Earth, Mercury, Venus and Mars are known as inner planets.
- Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune are known as outer planets.
- Inner planets are also known as terrestrial planets and outer planets are also known as gas giants.
- Although Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun but still it is not the hottest. The hottest planet is Venus.
- There are total five dwarf planets, Pluto, Ceres, Eris, Makemake and Haumea.
- The largest dwarf Planet Pluto is smaller than the USA.
- Comets and asteroid are made up of leftovers of our solar system.
- Some rocks of earth are pieces of Mars.
- Planet Saturn’s density is less than the water. If we somehow manage to put the planet in a tub of water then it would float.
- Olympus Mon, a volcano on Mars is the tallest mountain in our entire solar system.
- All four large planets: – Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune have ring but only Saturn’s ring are visible.
- An asteroid named as 243 Ida has its own moon.
- Neptune and Uranus are the two outermost gas giants. Sometimes, they are also known as ice giants.
- The largest ocean of all the planets is located on planet Jupiter.