Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
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.
Dwarf planet, however, was originally coined as a term for the smallest planets, not the largest sub-planets, and is still used that way by many planetary astronomers. Alan Stern coined the term dwarf planet , analogous to the term dwarf star , as part of a three-fold classification of planets, and he and many of his colleagues continue to ...
The next largest TNO moon is Orcus' moon Vanth at 442.5 ± 10.2 km and a poorly constrained (87 ± 8) × 10 18 kg, with an albedo of about 8%. Ceres, generally accepted as a dwarf planet, is added for comparison. Also added for comparison is Triton, which is thought to have been a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt before it was captured by Neptune.
Planets in the Solar System. According to the IAU definition, there are eight planets in the Solar System, which are (in increasing distance from the Sun): [2] Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Jupiter is the largest, at 318 Earth masses, whereas Mercury is the smallest, at 0.055 Earth masses.
Pluto (minor-planet designation: 134340 Pluto) is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt, a ring of bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune. It is the ninth-largest and tenth-most-massive known object to directly orbit the Sun. It is the largest known trans-Neptunian object by volume, by a small margin, but is less massive than Eris.
They are all considered to be relatively intact protoplanets, a precursor stage before becoming a fully-formed planet (see List of exceptional asteroids): [144] [145] [146] Ceres (2.55–2.98 AU) is the only dwarf planet in the asteroid belt. [147] It is the largest object in the belt, with a diameter of 940 km (580 mi). [148]
There are eight planets within the Solar System; planets outside of the solar system are also known as exoplanets. As of 19 September 2024, there are 5,759 confirmed exoplanets in 4,300 planetary systems, with 963 systems having more than one planet. [1] Most of these were discovered by the Kepler space telescope.
The catalog of minor planets is published by the Minor Planet Center and contains 720,000 entries, including 134340 Pluto. [1] For an overview, see index. The following is a list of numbered minor planets in ascending numerical order. With the exception of comets, minor planets are all small bodies in the Solar System, including asteroids ...