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There are eight planets within the Solar System; planets outside of the solar system are also known as exoplanets. Artist's concept of the potentially habitable exoplanet Kepler-186f. As of 19 December 2024, there are 5,811 confirmed exoplanets in 4,340 planetary systems, with 973 systems having more than one planet. [1]
There is strong consensus among astronomers that five members of the Kuiper belt are dwarf planets. [196] [201] Many dwarf planet candidates are being considered, pending further data for verification. [202] Pluto (29.7–49.3 AU) is the largest known object in the Kuiper belt.
The discovery of exoplanets led to another ambiguity in defining a planet: the point at which a planet becomes a star. Many known exoplanets are many times the mass of Jupiter, approaching that of stellar objects known as brown dwarfs.
There are at least 19 natural satellites in the Solar System that are known to be massive enough to be close to hydrostatic equilibrium: seven of Saturn, five of Uranus, four of Jupiter, and one each of Earth, Neptune, and Pluto. Alan Stern calls these satellite planets, although the term major moon is more common.
Pluto was, however, found to be too small to have disrupted the orbits of the outer planets, and its discovery was therefore coincidental. Like Ceres, it was initially considered to be a planet, but after the discovery of many other similarly sized objects in its vicinity it was reclassified in 2006 as a dwarf planet by the IAU. [22]
This star, known as HD 110067, may have even more planets. The six found so far are roughly two to three times the size of Earth, but with densities closer to the gas giants in our own solar system.
The new findings were published in a study on Wednesday in the journal Nature, ... planets outside of our solar system, known as exoplanets, have been found in recent years, but few have existed ...
A planet in the Solar System beyond the asteroid belt, and hence refers to the gas giants. Pulsar planet: A planet that orbits a pulsar or a rapidly rotating neutron star. Rogue planet: Also known as an interstellar planet. A planetary-mass object that orbits the galaxy directly. Superior planets: Planets whose orbits lie outside the orbit of ...