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The Sun, planets, moons and dwarf planets (true color, size to scale, distances not to scale) The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the Solar System: Solar System – gravitationally bound system comprising the Sun and the objects that orbit it, either directly or indirectly. Of those objects that orbit the ...
Greenland ice sheet as seen from space. An ice sheet is a body of ice which covers a land area of continental size - meaning that it exceeds 50,000 km 2. [4] The currently existing two ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica have a much greater area than this minimum definition, measuring at 1.7 million km 2 and 14 million km 2, respectively.
A dwarf planet is a small planetary-mass object that is in direct orbit around the Sun, massive enough to be gravitationally rounded, but insufficient to achieve orbital dominance like the eight classical planets of the Solar System. The prototypical dwarf planet is Pluto, which for decades was regarded as a planet before the "dwarf" concept ...
The result would be a transition to a different state. [1][2] In climate science, a tipping pointis a critical threshold that, when crossed, leads to large, accelerating and often irreversible changes in the climate system.[3] If tipping points are crossed, they are likely to have severe impacts on human society and may accelerate global warming.
The number of dwarf planets in the Solar System is unknown. Estimates have run as high as 200 in the Kuiper belt [1] and over 10,000 in the region beyond. [2] However, consideration of the surprisingly low densities of many large trans-Neptunian objects, as well as spectroscopic analysis of their surfaces, suggests that the number of dwarf planets may be much lower, perhaps only nine among ...
Mercator's 1569 map was a large planisphere, [ 3] i.e. a projection of the spherical Earth onto the plane. It was printed in eighteen separate sheets from copper plates engraved by Mercator himself. [ 4] Each sheet measures 33×40 cm and, with a border of 2 cm, the complete map measures 202×124 cm. All sheets span a longitude of 60 degrees ...
An ice giant is a giant planet composed mainly of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium, such as oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur. There are two ice giants in the Solar System: Uranus and Neptune . In astrophysics and planetary science the term "ice" refers to volatile chemical compounds with freezing points above about 100 K, such as ...
List of planet types. From top to bottom: Mercury, Venus without its atmosphere, Earth and the Moon, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune in false colour (not to scale) The following is a list of planet types by their mass, orbit, physical and chemical composition, or by another classification. The IAU defines that a planet in the Solar ...