Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
A terrestrial planet, tellurian planet, telluric planet, or rocky planet, is a planet that is composed primarily of silicate, rocks or metals.Within the Solar System, the terrestrial planets accepted by the IAU are the inner planets closest to the Sun: Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars.
The outer planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, compared to the inner planets Earth, Venus, Mars, and Mercury at the bottom right The four outer planets, called giant planets or Jovian planets, collectively make up 99% of the mass orbiting the Sun. [ h ] All four giant planets have multiple moons and a ring system, although only Saturn's ...
The four inner or terrestrial planets have dense, rocky compositions, few or no moons, and no ring systems. They are composed largely of minerals with high melting points, such as the silicates which form their solid crusts and semi-liquid mantles , and metals such as iron and nickel , which form their cores .
The eight planets of the Solar System with size to scale (up to down, left to right): Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune (outer planets), Earth, Venus, Mars, and Mercury (inner planets) A planet is a large, rounded astronomical body that is generally required to be in orbit around a star, stellar remnant, or brown dwarf, and is not one itself. [1]
Eventually, the Sun will likely expand sufficiently to overwhelm the inner planets (Mercury, Venus, and possibly Earth) but not the outer planets, including Jupiter and Saturn. Afterward, the Sun would be reduced to the size of a white dwarf , and the outer planets and their moons would continue orbiting this diminutive solar remnant.
Mercury to scale among the Inner Solar System planetary-mass objects beside the Sun, arranged by the order of their orbits outward from the Sun (from left: Mercury, Venus, Earth, the Moon, Mars and Ceres) Mercury is one of four terrestrial planets in the Solar System, which means it is a rocky body like Earth
The asteroid and comet belts orbit the Sun from the inner rocky planets into outer parts of the Solar System, interstellar space. [16] [17] [18] An astronomical unit, or AU, is the distance from Earth to the Sun, which is approximately 150 billion meters (93 million miles). [19]
The internal structure of the inner planets. The internal structure of the outer planets. A planetary core consists of the innermost layers of a planet. [1] Cores may be entirely liquid, or a mixture of solid and liquid layers as is the case in the Earth. [2]