Monday, March 25, 2024

Order Of The Solar System

How Did The Sun Form

Learn about the planets in our solar system for Kids with Ryan!

The solar system is anchored by our sun.

Before the solar system existed, a massive concentration of interstellar gas and dust created a molecular cloud that would form the suns birthplace. Cold temperatures caused the gas to clump together, growing steadily denser. The densest parts of the cloud began to collapse under their own gravity, perhaps with a nudge from a nearby stellar explosion, forming a wealth of young stellar objects known as protostars.

Gravity continued to collapse the material onto the infant solar system, creating a star and a disk of material from which the planets would form. Eventually, the newborn sun encompassed more than 99% of the solar systems mass, according to NASA . When pressure inside the star grew so powerful that fusion kicked in, turning hydrogen to helium, the star began to blast a stellar wind that helped clear out the debris and stopped it from falling inward.

Although gas and dust shroud young stars in visible wavelengths, infrared telescopes have probed many clouds in the Milky Way galaxy to study the environment of other newborn stars. Scientists have applied what theyve seen in other systems to our own star.

Jupiter: The Largest Planet In Our Solar System

– Day: 9.8 Earth hours

– Number of moons: 79

Its swirling clouds are colorful due to different types of trace gases including ammonia ice, ammonium hydrosulfide crystals as well as water ice and vapor.

A famous feature in its swirling clouds is Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, a giant storm more than 10,000 miles wide, first observed in 1831 by amateur astronomer Samuel Heinrich Schwabe. It has raged at more than 400 mph for the last 150 years, at least.

Jupiter has a strong magnetic field, and with 75 moons, including the largest moon in the solar system, Ganymede.

Related: Jupiter’s moons: Facts about the largest Jovian moons

Comparison With Extrasolar Systems

Compared to many extrasolar systems, the Solar System stands out in lacking planets interior to the orbit of Mercury. The known Solar System also lacks super-Earths, planets between one and ten times as massive as the Earth, although the hypothetical Planet Nine, if it does exist, could be a super-Earth beyond the Solar System as we understand it today. Uncommonly, it has only small rocky planets and large gas giants elsewhere planets of intermediate size are typicalboth rocky and gasso there is no gap as seen between the size of Earth and of Neptune . Also, these super-Earths have closer orbits than Mercury. This led to the hypothesis that all planetary systems start with many close-in planets, and that typically a sequence of their collisions causes consolidation of mass into few larger planets, but in case of the Solar System the collisions caused their destruction and ejection.

The orbits of Solar System planets are nearly circular. Compared to other systems, they have smaller orbital eccentricity. Although there are attempts to explain it partly with a bias in the radial-velocity detection method and partly with long interactions of a quite high number of planets, the exact causes remain undetermined.

Recommended Reading: How To Start A Solar Farm In Florida

Read Also: How Much Electric Do Solar Panels Produce

All Planets Fact And Solar System Planets In Order

A planet is a large and rounded astronomical object that orbits around its sun. Our solar system has 8 planets, and all eight planets are mentioned below in order of increasing distance from the sun:

  • Mercury1st planet from the sun,
  • Neptune 8th planet from the sun.
  • These were all 8 planets in order from the sun of our solar system. Apart from the eight planets, our solar system has 5 dwarf planets, hundreds of moons that orbit planets, millions of asteroids, comets, and, other small solar system objects.

    Here in this article, we have mentioned our eight solar system planets list with some interesting facts and information.

    Read Also: How Do Tesla Solar Panels Work

    What’s The Order Of The Planets In The Solar System

    Images Of The Solar System Planets In Order

    Over the past 60 years, humans have begun to explore our solar system in earnest. From the first launches in the late 1950s until today, we’ve sent probes, orbiters, landers and even rovers to every planet in our solar system. But can you name all eight of those planets in order? And can you put them in the correct order?

    In case you’re a little rusty, we’ll break down some common ways to order the planets plus a few tricks to help you remember them going forward. Let’s start with the distance from the sun.

    The most common way to order the planets is by their distance from the sun. Using this method, the planets are listed in the following order:

    Contents

    AU stands for astronomical units it’s the equivalent to the average distance from Earth to the sun . It’s a common way astronomers measure distances in the solar system that accounts for the large scale of these distances. To put it another way, Mercury, which is closest, is 35.98 million miles from the sun, while Neptune, the farthest, is 2.79 billion miles from the sun. Earth is 92.96 million miles from the sun.

    Also Check: How Are Solar Panels Made

    Magnetic Field And Magnetosphere

    Despite its small size and slow 59-day-long rotation, Mercury has a significant, and apparently global, . According to measurements taken by , it is about 1.1% the strength of Earths. The magnetic-field strength at Mercurys equator is about 300 . Like that of Earth, Mercurys magnetic field is . Unlike Earths, Mercurys poles are nearly aligned with the planets spin axis. Measurements from both the and MESSENGER space probes have indicated that the strength and shape of the magnetic field are stable.

    It is likely that this magnetic field is generated by a effect, in a manner similar to the magnetic field of Earth. This dynamo effect would result from the circulation of the planets iron-rich liquid core. Particularly strong effects caused by the planets high orbital eccentricity would serve to keep part of the core in the liquid state necessary for this dynamo effect.

    Mercurys magnetic field is strong enough to deflect the solar wind around the planet, creating a magnetosphere. The planets magnetosphere, though small enough to fit within Earth, is strong enough to trap solar wind . This contributes to the space weathering of the planets surface. Observations taken by the spacecraft detected this low energy plasma in the magnetosphere of the planets nightside. Bursts of energetic particles in the planets magnetotail indicate a dynamic quality to the planets magnetosphere.

    • Natural Satellites : 83

    • Light speed from Sun: 82 min

    Have You Ever Wondered Where Are The Planets Right Now

    For people interested in astrology the current positions and movements of the planets are very important and can give you a clue into how you are feeling and how your day is going to pan out. For astronomers, its equally important to know where the planets are so that they can observe them. For others, getting an understanding of where the Earth is in relation to the Sun and moon and planets is just, well, sort of nice to know. If youve ever sat outside at night and got into an discussion about whether that bright star is actually a planet, and if it is Which planet is it?, then this site might help narrow down the options!

    This online orrery will hopefully help you to understand whats going on out there.

    Don’t Miss: How Many Solar Panels For Rv

    The Sun And Planetary Environments

    Around 5.4 billion years from now, the core of the Sun will become hot enough to trigger hydrogen fusion in its surrounding shell. This will cause the outer layers of the star to expand greatly, and the star will enter a phase of its life in which it is called a red giant. Within 7.5 billion years, the Sun will have expanded to a radius of 1.2 AU â256 times its current size. At the tip of the red-giant branch, as a result of the vastly increased surface area, the Suns surface will be much cooler ) than now, and its luminosity much higherâup to 2,700 current solar luminosities. For part of its red-giant life, the Sun will have a strong stellar wind that will carry away around 33% of its mass. During these times, it is possible that Saturns moon Titan could achieve surface temperatures necessary to support life.

    As the Sun expands, it will swallow the planets Mercury and Venus.Earths fate is less clear although the Sun will envelop Earths current orbit, the stars loss of mass will cause the planets orbits to move farther out. If it were only for this, Venus and Earth would probably escape incineration, but a 2008 study suggests that Earth will likely be swallowed up as a result of tidal interactions with the Suns weakly-bound outer envelope.

    You May Like: Solar Panel Return On Investment

    The Planets In Order Of Distance Size Mass And More

    All the Planets of the Solar System | Space Science by KLT

    Is the order of the planets in our solar system important? In a sense yes, because the solar system as we know it depends strongly on the gravitational influences that every planet exerts on one another. The entire stability of our solar system is based on the current order and location of the planets. Jupiter is the planet that exerts the strongest gravitational influence on the solar system after the Sun. If this giant planet was placed at the outskirts of the system, say after Neptune , the whole order of the planets would be affected as well as their distance from the Sun. Life might not have started on Earth and you would not be reading this article right now.

    In this article, we will examine the order of the planets from the Sun and how to remember it. We will also rank them according to their size, mass, orbital period, and rotation period. Enjoy!

    Read Also: Best Solar Companies In Ct

    Read Also: Do You Get Paid For Solar Panels

    Scientific Revolution And New Planets

    With the advent of the Scientific Revolution and the heliocentric model of Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler, use of the term planet changed from something that moved around the sky relative to the fixed star to a body that orbited the Sun, directly or indirectly . Thus the Earth was added to the roster of planets and the Sun was removed. The Copernican count of primary planets stood until 1781, when William Herschel discovered Uranus.

    When four satellites of Jupiter and five of Saturn were discovered in the 17th century, they were thought of as satellite planets or secondary planets orbiting the primary planets, though in the following decades they would come to be called simply satellites for short. Scientists generally considered planetary satellites to also be planets until about the 1920s, although this usage was not common among non-scientists.

    In the first decade of the 19th century, four new planets were discovered: Ceres , Pallas , , and Vesta . It soon became apparent that they were rather different from previously known planets: they shared the same general region of space, between Mars and Jupiter , with sometimes overlapping orbits, where only one planet had been expected, and they were much much smaller indeed, it was suspected that they might be shards of a larger planet that had broken up. Herschel called them asteroids because even in the largest telescopes they resembled stars, without a resolvable disk.

    Dont Miss: How Does Irs Verify Solar Credit

    Planet Nine: A Planet Search At Solar Systems Edge

    In 2016, researchers proposed the possible existence of a ninth planet, for now, dubbed Planet Nine or Planet X. the planet is estimated to be about 10 times the mass of Earth and to orbit the sun between 300 and 1,000 times farther than the orbit of the earth.Scientists havent seen Planet Nine. They inferred its existence by its gravitational effects on other objects within the Kuiper Belt, a section at the fringe of the solar system thats home to icy rocks left over from the birth of the solar system. Also called trans-Neptunian objects, these Kuiper Belt objects have highly elliptical or oval orbits that align within the same direction.

    Scientists Mike Brown and Konstantin Batygin at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena described the evidence for Planet Nine during a study published within the Astronomical Journal. The research relies on mathematical models and computer simulations using observations of six other smaller Kuiper Belt Objects with orbits that aligned during a similar matter.

    Read Also: Decorative Solar Lights For Garden

    The Planets In Order Of Size

    The largest planets, rightly called the gas giants, are located on the outskirt of the solar system while the smallest, the rocky planets, are located in the inner region.

  • Jupiter is first, with a diameter of 88,846 miles
  • Saturn is second, with a diameter of 74,900 miles
  • Uranus is third, with a diameter of 31,763 miles
  • Neptune is fourth, with a diameter of 30,779 miles
  • Earth is fifth, with a diameter of 7,926 miles
  • Venus is sixth, with a diameter of 7,521 miles
  • Mercury is eighth, with a diameter of 3,031 miles
  • Could There Be Life On Venus

    17 Facts You Won

    Venus is very similar in size and structure to our planet, and is often called: “Earth Twin”. A better word for it would be “Toxic Twin”. There is simply no way that living organisms could survive on Venus. Besides the extreme heat, Venus is home to clouds full of sulfuric acid and an overall toxic atmosphere. If you thought this isn’t too bad, also know that the air pressure on Venus is 90 times more crushing than on Earth.

    Despite this, scientists do not reject the possibility of life for tiny organisms, and theorize that microbes could exist high within the clouds, where the temperatures are cooler.

    Also Check: How Much To Get Solar Panels On My House

    You Were Also Part Of The Team That Originally Confirmed The Toi

    There are almost 10,000 exoplanet candidates, but those aren’t all going to turn out to be planets. A large fraction will be, though, and it’s our job to confirm them.

    In 2020, there was a series of three papers that came out at the same time that confirmed the TOI-700 system. Emily Gilbert, who led this current effort, led one of those studies. That one looked at the star, its three planets known at the timeb, c and dand the dynamics of the system.

    I led another paper, which also used data from the Spitzer Space Telescope to confirm the system had a habitable-zone, Earth-sized planet. That was planet d.

    At the time, we had some hints that there might be another planet, planet e, but on the outside of the systemlike way, way outside. After we got in another year of observation with TESS, though, we discovered that planet e was actually inside the habitable zone, in between the orbits of planets b and c.

    Ancient And Medieval Observations

    The ancient named Mars , the god of war and plague. During Sumerian times, Nergal was a minor deity of little significance, but, during later times, his main cult center was the city of . In Mesopotamian texts, Mars is referred to as the star of judgement of the fate of the dead. The existence of Mars as a wandering object in the night sky was also recorded by the ancient and, by 1534 BCE, they were familiar with the of the planet. By the period of the , the were making regular records of the positions of the planets and systematic observations of their behavior. For Mars, they knew that the planet made 37 , or 42 circuits of the zodiac, every 79 years. They invented arithmetic methods for making minor corrections to the predicted positions of the planets. In , the planet was known as . Commonly, the Greek name for the planet now referred to as Mars, was Ares. It was the Romans who named the planet Mars, for their god of war, often represented by the sword and shield of the planets namesake.

    Dont Miss: How Do I Register My Business As A Sole Proprietorship

    Read Also: Solar Panels For Tiny House

    Could There Be Life On Mercury

    Finding life on Mercury is extremely unlikely. Because of its proximity to the sun, the planet faces extreme temperatures and solar radiation all year round, making survival almost impossible.

    The planet does not have a layered atmosphere like the Earth to retain heat, instead, it has a surface boundary exosphere meaning the surface temperatures vary from one extreme to the other, and range from -173 °C during the night to 427 °C in the daytime .

    It is possible that microorganisms could have lived on the planet millions of years ago, but no living thing is believed to be able to survive on the planet today.

    You May Like: Solar Water Panels For Sale

    Order Of The Planets From The Sun

    Planets of the Solar System | #aumsum #kids #science #education #children

    First the quick facts: Our Solar System has eight official planets which orbit the Sun. Here are the planets listed in order of their distance from the Sun:

    Mercury, Venus, Earth, , Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, andNeptune. An easy mnemonic for remembering the order is My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Noodles.

    If you add in the dwarf planets, Ceres is located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, while the remaining dwarf planets are in the outer Solar System and in order from the Sun are Pluto, Haumea, Makemake, and Eris. There is, as yet, a bit of indecision about the Trans-Neptunian Objects known as Orcus, Quaoar, 2007 O10, and Sedna and their inclusion in the dwarf planet category.

    A mnemonic for this list would be My Very Educated Mother Could Just Serve Us Noodles, Pie, Ham, Muffins, and Eggs You can find more tricks for remembering the order of the planets at our detailed article here.

    Now, lets look at a few details including the definition of a planet and a dwarf planet, as well as details about each of the planets in our Solar System.

    Artistic impression of the Solar System, with all known terrestrial planets, as giants, and dwarf planets. Credit: NASA

    Read Also: Solar Powered Outdoor Security Lighting

    Popular Articles
    Related news