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Relative masses of the Solar planets. Jupiter at 71% of the total and Saturn at 21% dominate the system. Relative masses of the solid bodies of the Solar System. Earth at 48% and Venus at 39% dominate. Bodies less massive than Pluto are not visible at this scale. Relative masses of the rounded moons of the Solar System.
The rings of Saturn are made up of icy objects ranging in size from one centimetre to hundreds of metres, each of which is on its own orbit about the planet. Thus, a precise number of Saturnian moons cannot be given, as there is no objective boundary between the countless small anonymous objects that form Saturn's ring system and the larger ...
The first image compares some of the largest TNOs in terms of size, color and albedo. This is a list of trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs), which are minor planets in the Solar System that orbit the Sun at a greater distance on average than Neptune , that is, their orbit has a semi-major axis greater than 30.1 astronomical units (AU).
Alan Stern calls these satellite planets, although the term major moon is more common. The smallest natural satellite that is gravitationally rounded is Saturn I Mimas (radius 198.2 ± 0.4 km). This is smaller than the largest natural satellite that is known not to be gravitationally rounded, Neptune VIII Proteus (radius 210 ± 7 km).
Pluto (minor-planet designation: 134340 Pluto) is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt, a ring of bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune. It is the ninth-largest and tenth-most-massive known object to directly orbit the Sun. It is the largest known trans-Neptunian object by volume, by a small margin, but is less massive than Eris.
Brown dwarfs are substellar objects that have more mass than the biggest gas giant planets, but less than the least massive main-sequence stars.Their mass is approximately 13 to 80 times that of Jupiter (M J) —not big enough to sustain nuclear fusion of ordinary hydrogen (1 H) into helium in their cores, but massive enough to emit some light and heat from the fusion of deuterium (2 H).
Fainter planetary rings can form as a result of meteoroid impacts with moons orbiting around the planet or, in the case of Saturn's E-ring, the ejecta of cryovolcanic material. [5] [6] Ring systems may form around centaurs when they are tidally disrupted in a close encounter (within 0.4 to 0.8 times the Roche limit ) with a giant planet.
Of those objects that orbit the Sun directly, the largest eight are the planets (including Earth), with the remainder being significantly smaller objects, such as dwarf planets and small Solar System bodies. Of the objects that orbit the Sun indirectly, the moons, two are larger than the smallest planet, Mercury.