Solar System

2018-06-18

Solar System

The Solar System is the gravitationally bound system comprising the Sun and the objects that orbit it, either directly or indirectly of the objects that orbit the Sun directly, the largest eight are the planets, with the remainder being smaller objects, such as dwarf planets and small Solar System bodies of the objects that orbit the Sun indirectly, the moons, two are larger than the smallest planet, Mercury.

The four Smaller Inner Planets are,

Mercury
Venus
Earth
Mars

The Four Outer Or Giant Planets are,

Jupiter
Saturn
Uranus
Neptune

The Solar System also contains smaller objects,

Asteroid Belt which lies between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, mostly contains objects composed, like the terrestrial planets, of rock and metal.

Dwarf Planets,

Pluto
Eris

The solar wind, a stream of charged particles flowing outwards from the Sun, creates a bubble-like region in the interstellar medium known as the heliosphere.

Distance and Scales

The distance from Earth to the Sun is 1 astronomical unit (150,000,000 km), or AU. For comparison, the radius of the Sun is 0.0047 AU (700,000 km). Thus, the Sun occupies 0.00001% (10−5 %) of the volume of a sphere with a radius the size of Earth’s orbit, whereas Earth’s volume is roughly one millionth (10−6) that of the Sun. Jupiter, the largest planet, is 5.2 astronomical units (780,000,000 km) from the Sun and has a radius of 71,000 km (0.00047 AU), whereas the most distant planet, Neptune, is 30 AU (4.5×109 km) from the Sun.

Formation and Evolution

The Solar System formed 4.568 billion years ago from the gravitational collapse of a region within a large molecular cloud. This initial cloud was likely several light-years across and probably birthed several stars.
As is typical of molecular clouds, this one consisted mostly of hydrogen, with some helium, and small amounts of heavier elements fused by previous generations of stars. As the region that would become the Solar System, known as the pre-solar nebula, collapsed, conservation of angular momentum caused it to rotate faster.
The centre, where most of the mass collected, became increasingly hotter than the surrounding disc. As the contracting nebula rotated faster, it began to flatten into a protoplanetary disc with a diameter of roughly 200 AU and a hot, dense protostar at the centre. The planets formed by accretion from this disc, in which dust and gas gravitationally attracted each other, coalescing to form ever larger bodies.
Hundreds of protoplanets may have existed in the early Solar System, but they either merged or were destroyed, leaving the planets, dwarf planets, and leftover minor bodies.

Sun (Popular Star)

The Sun is the Solar System’s star and by far its most massive component. Its large mass (332,900 Earth masses), which comprises 99.86% of all the mass in the Solar System, produces temperatures and densities in its core high enough to sustain nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium, making it a main-sequence star. This releases an enormous amount of energy, mostly radiated into space as electromagnetic radiation peaking in visible light.

Inner Solar System

The inner Solar System is the region comprising the terrestrial planets and the asteroid belt. Composed mainly of silicates and metals, the objects of the inner Solar System are relatively close to the Sun; the radius of this entire region is less than the distance between the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn. This region is also within the frost line, which is a little less than 5 AU (about 700 million km) from the Sun.

Inner Planets

The four terrestrial or inner planets have dense, rocky compositions, few or no moons, and no ring systems.
They are composed largely of refractory minerals, such as the silicates, which form their crusts and mantles, and metals, such as iron and nickel, which form their cores.
Three of the four inner planets (Venus, Earth and Mars) have atmospheres substantial enough to generate weather; all have impact craters and tectonic surface features, such as rift valleys and volcanoes.
The term inner planet should not be confused with inferior planet, which designates those planets that are closer to the Sun than Earth is (i.e. Mercury and Venus).

Mercury

Mercury (0.4 AU from the Sun) is the closest planet to the Sun and the smallest planet in the Solar System (0.055 Earth masses).
Mercury has no natural satellites; besides impact craters, its only known geological features are lobed ridges or rupes that were probably produced by a period of contraction early in its history.
Mercury’s very tenuous atmosphere consists of atoms blasted off its surface by the solar wind. Its relatively large iron core and thin mantle have not yet been adequately explained.
Hypotheses include that its outer layers were stripped off by a giant impact; or, that it was prevented from fully accreting by the young Sun’s energy.

Venus

Venus (0.7 AU from the Sun) is close in size to Earth (0.815 Earth masses) and, like Earth, has a thick silicate mantle around an iron core, a substantial atmosphere, and evidence of internal geological activity.
It is much drier than Earth, and its atmosphere is ninety times as dense. Venus has no natural satellites. It is the hottest planet, with surface temperatures over 400 °C (752 °F), most likely due to the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
No definitive evidence of current geological activity has been detected on Venus, but it has no magnetic field that would prevent depletion of its substantial atmosphere, which suggests that its atmosphere is being replenished by volcanic eruptions.

Earth

Earth (1 AU from the Sun) is the largest and densest of the inner planets, the only one known to have current geological activity, and the only place where life is known to exist.
Its liquid hydrosphere is unique among the terrestrial planets, and it is the only planet where plate tectonics has been observed.
Earth’s atmosphere is radically different from those of the other planets, having been altered by the presence of life to contain 21% free oxygen. It has one natural satellite, the Moon, the only large satellite of a terrestrial planet in the Solar System.

Mars

Mars (1.5 AU from the Sun) is smaller than Earth and Venus (0.107 Earth masses). It has an atmosphere of mostly carbon dioxide with a surface pressure of 6.1 millibars (roughly 0.6% of that of Earth).
Its surface, peppered with vast volcanoes, such as Olympus Mons, and rift valleys, such as Valles Marineris, shows geological activity that may have persisted until as recently as 2 million years ago.
Its red colour comes from iron oxide (rust) in its soil. Mars has two tiny natural satellites (Deimos and Phobos) thought to be either captured asteroids, or ejected debris from a massive impact early in Mars’s history.

Asteroid Belt

Asteroids except for the largest, Ceres, are classified as small Solar System bodies and are composed mainly of refractory rocky and metallic minerals, with some ice. They range from a few metres to hundreds of kilometres in size. Asteroids smaller than one meter are usually called meteoroids and micrometeoroids (grain-sized), depending on different, somewhat arbitrary definitions.

Outer Solar System

The outer region of the Solar System is home to the giant planets and their large moons. The centaurs and many short-period comets also orbit in this region. Due to their greater distance from the Sun, the solid objects in the outer Solar System contain a higher proportion of volatiles, such as water, ammonia, and methane than those of the inner Solar System because the lower temperatures allow these compounds to remain solid.

Outer Planet

The four outer planets, or giant planets (sometimes called Jovian planets), collectively make up 99% of the mass known to orbit the Sun. Jupiter and Saturn are together more than 400 times the mass of Earth and consist overwhelmingly of hydrogen and helium; Uranus and Neptune are far less massive (<20 Earth masses each) and are composed primarily of ices. For these reasons, some astronomers suggest they belong in their own category, “ice giants”. All four giant planets have rings, although only Saturn’s ring system is easily observed from Earth. The term superior planet designates planets outside Earth’s orbit and thus includes both the outer planets and Mars.

Jupiter

Jupiter (5.2 AU), at 318 Earth masses, is 2.5 times the mass of all the other planets put together. It is composed largely of hydrogen and helium.
Jupiter’s strong internal heat creates semi-permanent features in its atmosphere, such as cloud bands and the Great Red Spot. Jupiter has 69 known satellites.
The four largest, Ganymede, Callisto, Io, and Europa, show similarities to the terrestrial planets, such as volcanism and internal heating. Ganymede, the largest satellite in the Solar System, is larger than Mercury.
Jupiter Will take 12 years to take one revolution around the sun.

Saturn

Saturn (9.5 AU), distinguished by its extensive ring system, has several similarities to Jupiter, such as its atmospheric composition and magnetosphere.
Although Saturn has 60% of Jupiter’s volume, it is less than a third as massive, at 95 Earth masses. Saturn is the only planet of the Solar System that is less dense than water.
The rings of Saturn are made up of small ice and rock particles. Saturn has 62 confirmed satellites composed largely of ice.
Two of these, Titan and Enceladus, show signs of geological activity. Titan, the second-largest moon in the Solar System, is larger than Mercury and the only satellite in the Solar System with a substantial atmosphere.

Uranus

Uranus (19.2 AU), at 14 Earth masses, is the lightest of the outer planets. Uniquely among the planets, it orbits the Sun on its side; its axial tilt is over ninety degrees to the ecliptic.
It has a much colder core than the other giant planets and radiates very little heat into space. Uranus has 27 known satellites, the largest ones being Titania, Oberon, Umbriel, Ariel, and Miranda.

Neptune

Neptune (30.1 AU), though slightly smaller than Uranus, is more massive (equivalent to 17 Earths) and hence more dense.
It radiates more internal heat, but not as much as Jupiter or Saturn. Neptune has 14 known satellites. The largest, Triton, is geologically active, with geysers of liquid nitrogen.
Triton is the only large satellite with a retrograde orbit. Neptune is accompanied in its orbit by several minor planets, termed Neptune trojans, that are in 1:1 resonance with it.

Centuars

The centaurs are icy comet-like bodies whose orbits have semi-major axes greater than Jupiter’s (5.5 AU) and less than Neptune’s (30 AU).
The largest known centaur, 10199 Chariklo, has a diameter of about 250 km. The first centaur discovered, 2060 Chiron, has also been classified as comet (95P) because it develops a coma just as comets do when they approach the Sun.

Comets

Comets are small Solar System bodies, typically only a few kilometres across, composed largely of volatile ices.
They have highly eccentric orbits, generally a perihelion within the orbits of the inner planets and an aphelion far beyond Pluto.
When a comet enters the inner Solar System, its proximity to the Sun causes its icy surface to sublimate and ionise, creating a coma: a long tail of gas and dust often visible to the naked eye.

Trans-Neptunian Region

Beyond the orbit of Neptune lies the area of the “trans-Neptunian region”, with the doughnut-shaped Kuiper belt, home of Pluto and several other dwarf planets, and an overlapping disc of scattered objects, which is tilted toward the plane of the Solar System and reaches much further out than the Kuiper belt. The entire region is still largely unexplored. It appears to consist overwhelmingly of many thousands of small worlds—the largest having a diameter only a fifth that of Earth and a mass far smaller than that of the Moon—composed mainly of rock and ice. This region is sometimes described as the “third zone of the Solar System”, enclosing the inner and the outer Solar System.

Kupier Planet

The Kuiper belt is a great ring of debris similar to the asteroid belt, but consisting mainly of objects composed primarily of ice. It extends between 30 and 50 AU from the Sun. Though it is estimated to contain anything from dozens to thousands of dwarf planets, it is composed mainly of small Solar System bodies. Many of the larger Kuiper belt objects, such as Quaoar, Varuna, and Orcus, may prove to be dwarf planets with further data. There are estimated to be over 100,000 Kuiper belt objects with a diameter greater than 50 km, but the total mass of the Kuiper belt is thought to be only a tenth or even a hundredth the mass of Earth.

Pluto and Charon

The dwarf planet Pluto (39 AU average) is the largest known object in the Kuiper belt. When discovered in 1930, it was considered to be the ninth planet; this changed in 2006 with the adoption of a formal definition of planet. Pluto has a relatively eccentric orbit inclined 17 degrees to the ecliptic plane and ranging from 29.7 AU from the Sun at perihelion (within the orbit of Neptune) to 49.5 AU at aphelion. Pluto has a 3:2 resonance with Neptune, meaning that Pluto orbits twice round the Sun for every three Neptunian orbits. Kuiper belt objects whose orbits share this resonance are called plutinos.

Charon, the largest of Pluto’s moons, is sometimes described as part of a binary system with Pluto, as the two bodies orbit a barycentre of gravity above their surfaces (i.e. they appear to “orbit each other”). Beyond Charon, four much smaller moons, Styx, Nix, Kerberos, and Hydra, orbit within the system.

Eris

Eris (68 AU average) is the largest known scattered disc object, and caused a debate about what constitutes a planet, because it is 25% more massive than Pluto and about the same diameter. It is the most massive of the known dwarf planets. It has one known moon, Dysnomia. Like Pluto, its orbit is highly eccentric, with a perihelion of 38.2 AU (roughly Pluto’s distance from the Sun) and an aphelion of 97.6 AU, and steeply inclined to the ecliptic plane.

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WORLD GEOGRAPHY COMPLETE NOTES

Tabulation

Data about the planets of our solar system (Planetary facts taken from Nasa’s Planetary Fact Sheet – Metric).
		Name	Mass (10²⁴kg)	Diameter (km)	Density (kg/m³)	Gravity (m/s²)	Length of day (hours)	Distance from Sun (10⁶km)	Mean temperature (°C)	Number of moons	Notes
Terrestial planets		Mercury	0.330	4,879	5427	3.7	4222.6	57.9	167	0	Closest to the Sun
		Venus	4.87	12,104	5243	8.9	2802.0	108.2	464	0
		Earth	5.97	12,756	5514	9.8	24.0	149.6	15	1	Our world
		Mars	0.642	6,792	3933	3.7	24.7	227.9	-65	2	The red planet
Jovian planets	Gas giants	Jupiter	1898	142,984	1326	23.1	9.9	778.6	-110	67	The largest planet
	Gas giants	Saturn	568	120,536	687	9.0	10.7	1433.5	-140	62
	Ice giants	Uranus	86.8	51,118	1271	8.7	17.2	2872.5	-195	27
	Ice giants	Neptune	102	49,528	1638	11.0	16.1	4495.1	-200	14
Dwarf planets		Pluto	0.0146	2,370	2095	0.7	153.3	5906.4	-225	5	Declassified as a planet in 2006, but this remains controversial.

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