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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 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 ...
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 ...
Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the Sun, at a distance of 4.2 ly (1.3 pc), is a red dwarf.. A red dwarf is the smallest kind of star on the main sequence.Red dwarfs are by far the most common type of fusing star in the Milky Way, at least in the neighborhood of the Sun.
The Solar System, with sizes of the Sun and planets to scale. The terrestrial planets are on the right, the gas and ice giants are on the left. The Sun has eight known planets orbiting it. This includes four terrestrial planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars), two gas giants (Jupiter and Saturn), and two ice giants (Uranus and Neptune).
Because of the distance of Neptune from Earth, its angular diameter only ranges from 2.2 to 2.4 arcseconds, [7] [19] the smallest of the Solar System planets. Its small apparent size makes it challenging to study visually.
Of the Solar System's eight planets and its nine most likely dwarf planets, six planets and seven dwarf planets are known to be orbited by at least 300 natural satellites, or moons. At least 19 of them are large enough to be gravitationally rounded; of these, all are covered by a crust of ice except for Earth's Moon and Jupiter's Io . [ 1 ]
Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute, 07.03.03: "Voyage to the Planets" by Nicholas R. Perrone, 2007 (accessed November 2010) Journey Through the Galaxy: "Planets of the Solar System" by Stuart Robbins and David McDonald, 2006 (accessed November 2010) The Nine Planets, "Appendix 2: Solar System Extrema" by Bill Arnett, 2007 (accessed November 2010)