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Our solar system consists of our star, the Sun, and everything bound to it by gravity – the planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune; dwarf planets such as Pluto; dozens of moons; and millions of asteroids, comets, and meteoroids.
The Sun is the largest object in our solar system. Its diameter is about 865,000 miles (1.4 million kilometers). Its gravity holds the solar system together, keeping everything from the biggest planets to the smallest bits of debris in orbit around it.
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understand our immense solar system. The Standard Model of the Sun (see Figure 1) makes it possible for scientists to estimate the temperature profile of the sun. Data from the sun's profile (see Figure 2) make it possible to make observations, predictions, and to compare these predictions based on the Standard Solar Model.
NASA’s real-time science encyclopedia of deep space exploration. Our scientists and far-ranging robots explore the wild frontiers of our solar system.
A planet is a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (c) has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit.
Neptune is one of two ice giants in the outer solar system (the other is Uranus). Most (80% or more) of the planet's mass is made up of a hot dense fluid of "icy" materials – water, methane, and ammonia – above a small, rocky core.
The major scientific principles and assumptions employed by the Standard Solar Model are: (1) the sun originated from a primordial cloud of (mostly) hydrogen and some helium gas and that the fraction of
The Moon makes a complete orbit around Earth in 27 Earth days and rotates or spins at that same rate, or in that same amount of time. Because Earth is moving as well – rotating on its axis as it orbits the Sun – from our perspective, the Moon appears to orbit us every 29 days.
In October 2001, the Voyage Scale Model Solar System opened in Washington, DC, displaying a one to ten billion scale of the sizes of the Sun and planets, and the distances between them.