This is a system of planets, in the center of which is bright Star, source of energy, heat and light - the Sun.
According to one theory, the Sun was formed along with the solar system about 4.5 billion years ago as a result of the explosion of one or more supernovae. Initially, the solar system was a cloud of gas and dust particles, which, in motion and under the influence of their mass, formed a disk in which arose new star The sun and our entire solar system.
At the center of the solar system is the Sun, around which nine large planets revolve in orbits. Since the Sun is displaced from the center of the planetary orbits, then during the cycle of revolution around the Sun, the planets either approach or move away in their orbits.
There are two groups of planets:
Terrestrial planets: and . These planets are small in size with a rocky surface, they are closer than others to the Sun.
Giant planets: and . These are large planets, consisting mainly of gas, and they are characterized by the presence of rings consisting of ice dust and many rocky pieces.
And here does not fall into any group, because, despite its location in the solar system, it is located too far from the Sun and has a very small diameter, only 2320 km, which is half the diameter of Mercury.
Planets of the solar system
Let's start a fascinating acquaintance with the planets of the solar system in order of their location from the Sun, and also consider their main satellites and some other space objects (comets, asteroids, meteorites) in the gigantic expanses of our planetary system.
Rings and moons of Jupiter: Europa, Io, Ganymede, Callisto and others...
The planet Jupiter is surrounded by a whole family of 16 satellites, and each of them has its own, unlike other features ...
Rings and moons of Saturn: Titan, Enceladus and more...
Not only the planet Saturn has characteristic rings, but also on other giant planets. Around Saturn, the rings are especially clearly visible, because they consist of billions of small particles that revolve around the planet, in addition to several rings, Saturn has 18 satellites, one of which is Titan, its diameter is 5000 km, which makes it the largest satellite in the solar system ...
Rings and moons of Uranus: Titania, Oberon and others...
The planet Uranus has 17 satellites and, like other giant planets, thin rings encircling the planet, which practically do not have the ability to reflect light, therefore they were discovered not so long ago in 1977 quite by accident ...
Rings and moons of Neptune: 
Triton, Nereid and others...
Initially, before the exploration of Neptune by the Voyager 2 spacecraft, it was known about two satellites of the planet - Triton and Nerida. Interesting fact that the Triton satellite has a reverse direction of orbital motion, strange volcanoes were also discovered on the satellite that erupted nitrogen gas like geysers, spreading a dark mass (from liquid to vapor) for many kilometers into the atmosphere. During its mission, Voyager 2 discovered six more satellites of the planet Neptune...
Its planets and stars, especially compared to our Earth.
British astronomer John Brady(John Brady) tried to visualize the scale of objects in our galaxy, superimposing the continents of the Earth and our world on the celestial bodies.
Many objects are so large that it is difficult to show their actual size.
Dimensions of the planet Earth in comparison
neutron star
Neutron star compared to North East England
A neutron star is a rather strange and unusual object. Although its diameter is only 20 kilometers, its mass is 1.5 times that of the Sun, as it is incredibly dense.
So dense that a teaspoon would weigh a billion tons. And if you stood on its surface, you would feel gravity, which is 200 billion times greater than on our planet.
In addition, a neutron star has the ability to rotate, and the speed of the fastest neutron star is 716 times per second.
Mount Olympus on Mars
Martian volcano Olympus is placed in Arizona
Although Mars is a relatively small planet, it contains largest volcano in the solar system- Mount Olympus. It is 3 times higher than Mount Everest, reaching 624 km in width and 26 km high.
At the top of this incredible structure is a 80 km diameter caldera.
Jupiter's moon Io
Comparison of Jupiter's moon Io with North America
Io's satellite is the most volcanic body in the solar system. Its diameter is 3636 km, and the size is close to the size of the Earth's satellite - the Moon. Io is just tiny compared to Jupiter, being 350,000 km away (or 2.5 Jupiters).
Due to Jupiter's gravitational pull, Io's core is molten, and volcanoes on the surface erupt lava, coating Io with yellow sulfur. Lava flows so high that if they were on Earth, they would be taller than the International Space Station.
Dimensions of stars and planets in the solar system
The planet Mars
North America compared to Mars
The planet Mars is not as big as it might seem. If you decided to fly from one side of Mars to the other, it would take 8 hours. The diameter of Mars is 6792 km at the equator, and from pole to pole it is 40 km less.
Mars is the second smallest planet in the solar system after Mercury. Actually Mars' land mass is almost the same as Earth's, and although much smaller than Earth, it has no oceans.
Saturn
In the image, you can see how much Saturn is larger than the Earth in size.
The width of the rings of Saturn would fit 6 planets Earth.
The diameter of the main disk of Saturn can fit almost 10 planets of the Earth, and if it were possible to fill the space inside Saturn, it would fit 764 Lands.
Rings of Saturn
This is what our planet would look like if the Earth were placed instead of the disk of Saturn
Saturn's icy rings are made up of billions of particles, ranging from tiny grains to mountain-sized clumps.
rings reach 1 km thick, and the distance from the inner ring to the outer is 282,000 km, which is three-quarters of the distance from the Earth to the Moon.
Jupiter
Dimensions North America against the backdrop of Jupiter
Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system and its mass is greater than all the planets and moons combined.
Jupiter's diameter is 142,984 km at the equator. This is 11 times the diameter of our planet. Lightning on Jupiter is 1,000 times stronger than on Earth, and the wind speed is upper layers atmosphere can reach 100 meters per second.
In addition, it is the fastest rotating planet that makes rotation around its axis in 10 hours(Earth revolves around g of its axis in 24 hours).
The sun
Earth compared to the Sun
The sun makes up 99.86 percent of the mass of the entire solar system, which means that our Earth, other planets and satellites are just small rubble left after the formation of the Sun 4.5 billion years ago.
An ordinary sunspot easily outshines the Earth with its size. According to the diameter of the sun can fit 109 planets Earth, and to fill the volume of the Sun, it would take 1,300,000 Lands.
Upon closer examination, the Sun looks granular, and in total there are up to 4 million such granules along the diameter of the solar disk, each of them up to 1000 km in size.
In 1 second, the Sun releases more energy than has been produced in the entire history of mankind. It loses 4 billion material every second, but it can live another 5 billion years.
But it is worth remembering that the Sun is only one of the hundreds of billions of stars in our Milky Way galaxy.
Perpetuate your love for the untimely departed in granite. Think of the future, but don't forget the past. Granite monuments, memorials, structures, tombstones, slabs and any other granite products are perfectly preserved under different weather conditions and temperature conditions. The service life of the manufactured granite monument is unlimited. Orders section will help you order and discuss all financial issues. We will leave the memory of your relatives in Ukraine!
Comparative sizes of the Sun, Earth and other planets.
Earth is the third planet from the Sun (the proportions of the sizes of all planets and the Sun are observed). So you can draw the circumference of the Sun and understand how small the Earth is
Closest to the Sun (at an average distance of 58 million km) is the planet Mercury. It is much smaller than the Earth. There is no atmosphere on Mercury, which means there can be no life; Mercury always has the same half facing the Sun. Mercury is very difficult to observe from Earth, most often it is lost in the rays of the Sun.
Farther than Mercury (on average, at a distance of 108 million km from the Sun), the planet Venus, the brightest luminary in the sky after the Sun and the Moon, circulates. Venus is almost the same size and mass as Earth. Venus is surrounded air atmosphere. Dense clouds hide its surface from us.
The third planet is our Earth. Behind it, at a distance of 228 million km from the Sun, the planet Mars circulates. This planet is much smaller than Earth, but larger than Mercury. Mars is surrounded by an atmosphere, but less dense than Earth's. The transparency of the atmosphere of Mars allowed astronomers to learn a lot about the structure of its surface and find out that Mars has a very harsh climate. Currently, scientists are debating the question of whether certain types of plants can exist on Mars. Whether there is life on Mars and Venus is one of the exciting questions of science. It will probably be possible to find out
you're human to these planets. Probably, such flights will be carried out in our century.
Much farther from the Sun (5 times farther than the Earth) the planet Jupiter orbits. It is the largest of the planets solar system, 1312 times the volume of the Earth. Somewhat smaller than Jupiter, the planet following it is Saturn (9 times farther from the Sun than the Earth). Next come two planets: Uranus (19 times farther from the Sun than Earth) and Neptune (30 times farther). Both of them are smaller than Saturn, but much larger than the Earth. These four planets are called "giant planets". They are surrounded by vast atmospheres of poisonous gases. Cold prevails on these planets (temperature 150-220° below zero), and it is clear that there is no need to talk about the possibility of life on them.
And, finally, very far (40 times farther than the Earth from the Sun) revolves around the Sun another planet - Pluto, the nature of which is still very little known.
Whether there are planets even more distant than Pluto, or whether the solar system "ends" with Pluto, we do not yet know.
There are many more minor planets in the solar system (most of them revolve around the Sun between Mars and Jupiter). Many large planets have satellites revolving around them, similar to the Moon, the Earth's satellite (for example, Jupiter has 12 known satellites). Comets roam between the planets, also subject to solar gravity.
The sun is one of the stars closest to us. The nearest star after the Sun is 40 trillion kilometers away from the Earth. A light beam (running 300 thousand km per second) comes from the star closest to the Earth for 4 1/3 years, while it comes from the Sun in 8 minutes, and from the Moon in 1.4 seconds.
The stars are much more diverse than the planets of the solar system. There are stars many times larger and more massive than the Sun and stars smaller than it. Stars are known that radiate much more heat and light than the Sun, and the stars are comparatively "cold". There is no doubt that planets revolve around many stars, that life exists on some of the planets. But even the most powerful modern telescopes cannot detect planets around nearby stars.
On a clear night, a wide band of the Milky Way is visible in the sky. This is a huge number of stars that are not distinguishable with the naked eye separately due to remoteness. Milky Way and all other stars visible in the sky form our Galaxy - a huge star system. It contains over 150 billion stars, and the Sun is just one of them. The Sun (and with it the Earth and other planets) is not in the center of the Galaxy, but closer to its border. A ray of light travels through our entire star system in about 100,000 years.
With strong telescopes, very small hazy spots can be seen in the sky. These are star systems similar to our galaxy, some much larger than it. They are so far from the Earth that the light from them reaches us for millions, hundreds of millions and even billions of years.
Even in ancient times, people contemplated the starry sky. Even then it was not just admiring the majestic picture of the sky. In the sky, changes were noticed that are closely related to the phenomena taking place on Earth.
The sun rises above the horizon every morning, rises above it, reaching its greatest height at noon, and then goes to sunset. This is repeated every day. The sun rose and the day began. The sun went down, the day ended, the night began.
It has long been observed that most of the stars appear every evening in the eastern part of the sky, rise above the horizon, reaching their greatest height above it in the southern part of the sky, and then set in the western part of the horizon. The next evening, each star rises again at the same point in the sky as the day before.
However, long and systematic observations of the sky were needed (they were already carried out in ancient times) in order to notice that the Sun moves across the sky from day to day, from month to month, making a full circle in it in approximately 365 1/4 days, i.e., during the time when the seasons change on Earth. At the same time, the Sun each time moves across the sky along the same path, past the same stars. If at this or that moment of a given year the Sun is near such and such stars, then it was so at the same time of the year many years ago, and so it will be many years later.
The moon appears in the form of a narrow crescent, then "grows", reaches the full moon and decreases again to a crescent, then becomes invisible at the new moon. And all this happens in 29 days.
Since ancient times, "wandering" luminaries have been noticed - planets that move across the sky. People formed the opinion that the Earth is motionless, and the entire firmament of heaven with countless stars rotates around it every day. The sun makes a complex movement around the Earth - daily, together with the vault of heaven, and annual, moving among the stars. The moon revolves around the earth in 29 days, and the planets at different times.
The erroneous notion that the earth rests at the center of the universe and that the celestial bodies were created only to light and warm the earth was supported by the reactionary teaching of the church.
Our Earth is great. Its nature is diverse, the wealth of its bowels is incalculable. And at the same time, the huge Earth is only one of the planets revolving around the Sun.
Compared to the Earth, the Sun is a gigantic hot ball. Its diameter is 109 times the diameter of the Earth, and its volume is 1301 thousand times greater than the volume the globe. The average distance from the Earth to the Sun is 149,500 thousand km (approximately). Therefore, the Sun appears in the sky as a small disk.
The sun radiates a lot of light and heat into the world space. Only an insignificant part of this heat and light - less than one two-billionth part - is received by the Earth. But even this is quite enough to illuminate and warm the Earth and everything living on it for billions of years.
All bodies in nature have the property of attracting each other. This property of bodies is called "gravity". The greater the mass of the body (i.e., the more matter contained in it), the greater the force of attraction inherent in it.
The mass of the Earth is very large - it is six sextillion tons.
The powerful force of gravity holds everything on Earth. In our time, the gigantic advances in science and technology made it possible for the first time to overcome the earth's gravity and launch artificial earth satellites and spaceships into the world space.
The mass of the Sun is 333 thousand times greater than the mass of the Earth. The force of attraction of the Sun is so great that it subjugates all the planets, makes them move, or, as they say, turn around the Sun. The planets are the "eternal satellites" of the Sun. Nine planets revolve around the Sun, among them the Earth.
And for a snack, the ratio of the mass of the Sun to the masses of Black holes in the Galaxy
And even more large object than a black hole Quasar is a bright object at the center of a galaxy that produces about 10 trillion times more energy per second than our Sun and whose radiation is highly variable across all wavelengths
Our solar system is made up of the sun, planets orbiting it, and smaller celestial bodies. All of these are mysterious and amazing, because they are still not fully understood. Below will be indicated the sizes of the planets of the solar system in ascending order, and briefly talk about the planets themselves.
There is everything famous list planets, in which they are listed in order of their distance from the Sun:
Pluto used to be in last place, but in 2006 it lost its status as a planet, as larger celestial bodies were found farther away. Listed planets subdivided into stone (inner) and giant planets.
Brief information about the stone planets
The inner (stone) planets include those bodies that are located inside the asteroid belt that separates Mars and Jupiter. They got their name "stone" because they consist of various hard rocks, minerals and metals. They are united by a small number or even the absence of satellites and rings (like Saturn). On the surface of the stone planets there are volcanoes, depressions and craters formed as a result of the fall of other cosmic bodies.
But if we compare their sizes and arrange them in ascending order, the list will look like this:
Brief information about the giant planets
The giant planets are located beyond the asteroid belt and therefore they are also called outer. They consist of very light gases - hydrogen and helium. These include:
But if you make a list by the size of the planets in the solar system in ascending order, then the order changes:
A little information about the planets
In modern scientific understanding, a planet means a celestial body that revolves around the Sun and has enough mass for its own gravity. Thus, there are 8 planets in our system, and, importantly, these bodies are not similar to each other: each has its own unique differences, both in appearance and in the very components of the planet.
- This is the closest planet to the Sun and the smallest among the rest. It weighs 20 times less than the Earth! But, despite this, it has a sufficiently high density, which allows us to conclude that there are a lot of metals in its depths. Due to its close proximity to the Sun, Mercury is subject to sharp temperature changes: at night it is very cold, during the day the temperature rises sharply.
- This is the next planet close to the Sun, in many ways similar to the Earth. It has a more powerful atmosphere than the Earth, and is considered a very hot planet (its temperature is above 500 C).
- This unique planet due to its hydrosphere, and the presence of life on it led to the appearance of oxygen in its atmosphere. Most of the surface is covered with water, and the rest is occupied by the continents. The unique feature is tectonic plates, which move, albeit very slowly, causing the landscape to change. The Earth has one satellite - the Moon.
Also known as the "Red Planet". It gets its fiery red color from a large number iron oxides. Mars has a very rarefied atmosphere and much lower atmospheric pressure than Earth. Mars has two satellites - Deimos and Phobos.
- this is a real giant among the planets of the solar system. Its weight is 2.5 times the weight of all the planets combined. The surface of the planet is made up of helium and hydrogen and is similar in many ways to the sun. Therefore, it is not surprising that there is no life on this planet - no water and no solid surface. But Jupiter has a large number of satellites: 67 are known at the moment.
- this planet is famous for the presence of rings, consisting of ice and dust, revolving around the planet. With its atmosphere, it resembles that of Jupiter, and is slightly smaller in size than this giant planet. In terms of the number of satellites, Saturn is also slightly behind - it knows 62 of them. The largest satellite, Titan, is larger than Mercury.
- the lightest planet among the outer ones. Its atmosphere is the coldest in the entire system (minus 224 degrees), it has a magnetosphere and 27 satellites. Uranus is made up of hydrogen and helium, and ammonia ice and methane have also been noted. Due to the fact that Uranus has a large axial tilt, it seems that the planet is rolling rather than rotating.
- despite being smaller than y, it is heavier than it and exceeds the mass of the Earth. This is the only planet, which was found by mathematical calculations, and not due to astronomical observations. On this planet, the strongest winds in the solar system were recorded. Neptune has 14 moons, one of which, Triton, is the only one that rotates backwards.
It is very difficult to imagine all the scales of the solar system within the studied planets. It seems to people that the Earth is a huge planet, and, in comparison with other celestial bodies, it is. But if you put giant planets next to it, then the Earth already takes on tiny sizes. Of course, next to the Sun, all celestial bodies seem small, so to represent all the planets in their full scale is a difficult task.
The most famous classification of the planets is their distance from the Sun. But a listing that takes into account the sizes of the planets of the solar system in ascending order will also be correct. The list will be presented as follows:
As you can see, the order has not changed much: the first lines are the inner planets, and the first place is occupied by Mercury, and the other positions are the outer planets. In fact, it doesn’t matter at all in what order the planets are located, from this they will not become less mysterious and beautiful.
On March 13, 1781, English astronomer William Herschel discovered the seventh planet in the solar system - Uranus. And on March 13, 1930, American astronomer Clyde Tombaugh discovered the ninth planet in the solar system - Pluto. By the beginning of the 21st century, it was believed that the solar system included nine planets. However, in 2006, the International Astronomical Union decided to strip Pluto of this status.
There are already 60 known natural satellites of Saturn, most of which have been discovered using spacecraft. Most satellites are made up of rocks and ice. The largest satellite, Titan, discovered in 1655 by Christian Huygens, is larger than the planet Mercury. The diameter of Titan is about 5200 km. Titan orbits Saturn every 16 days. Titan is the only satellite to have a very dense atmosphere, 1.5 times the size of Earth's, and consisting mostly of 90% nitrogen, with a moderate amount of methane.
The International Astronomical Union officially recognized Pluto as a planet in May 1930. At that moment, it was assumed that its mass was comparable to the mass of the Earth, but later it was found that the mass of Pluto is almost 500 times less than the Earth's, even less than the mass of the Moon. The mass of Pluto is 1.2 times 1022 kg (0.22 Earth masses). The average distance of Pluto from the Sun is 39.44 AU. (5.9 by 10 to the 12th degree km), the radius is about 1.65 thousand km. The period of revolution around the Sun is 248.6 years, the period of rotation around its axis is 6.4 days. The composition of Pluto supposedly includes rock and ice; the planet has a thin atmosphere composed of nitrogen, methane and carbon monoxide. Pluto has three moons: Charon, Hydra and Nyx.
In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, many objects were discovered in the outer solar system. It has become clear that Pluto is only one of the largest Kuiper belt objects known to date. Moreover, at least one of the objects of the belt - Eris - is more large body than Pluto and 27% heavier than it. In this regard, the idea arose to no longer consider Pluto as a planet. On August 24, 2006, at the XXVI General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union (IAU), it was decided to henceforth call Pluto not a "planet", but a "dwarf planet".
At the conference, a new definition of the planet was developed, according to which planets are considered to be bodies that revolve around a star (and are not themselves a star), have a hydrostatically balanced shape and have "cleared" the area in the region of their orbit from other, smaller, objects. Dwarf planets will be considered objects that revolve around a star, have a hydrostatically equilibrium shape, but have not "cleared" the nearby space and are not satellites. Planets and dwarf planets are two different class objects of the solar system. All other objects revolving around the Sun and not being satellites will be called small bodies of the solar system.
Thus, since 2006, there have been eight planets in the solar system: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune. Five dwarf planets are officially recognized by the International Astronomical Union: Ceres, Pluto, Haumea, Makemake, and Eris.
On June 11, 2008, the IAU announced the introduction of the concept of "plutoid". It was decided to call plutoids celestial bodies that revolve around the Sun in an orbit whose radius is greater than the radius of Neptune's orbit, whose mass is sufficient for gravitational forces to give them an almost spherical shape, and which do not clear the space around their orbit (that is, many small objects revolve around them ).
Since it is still difficult to determine the shape and thus the relation to the class of dwarf planets for such distant objects as plutoids, scientists recommended temporarily assigning to plutoids all objects whose absolute asteroid magnitude (brilliance from a distance of one astronomical unit) is brighter than +1. If it later turns out that the object assigned to the plutoids is not a dwarf planet, it will be deprived of this status, although the assigned name will be left. The dwarf planets Pluto and Eris were classified as plutoids. In July 2008, Makemake was included in this category. On September 17, 2008, Haumea was added to the list.
The material was prepared on the basis of information from open sources