Our solar system is an amazing place. Not only is it home to eight planets, it also contains several dwarf planets, hundreds of moons and thousands of stars and asteroids. Although most people believe that the edge of the solar system is the edge of Pluto's orbit, it is far from the truth.
During the 20th century, scientists not only assumed that the size of the solar system extends for almost 2 light-years - it is 125,000 times the distance from the Sun to the Earth - but also that there are many objects beyond Pluto. Just imagine what gigantic objects are adjacent to us!
We bring to your attention a list of the 10 largest planets of the solar system: the rating of the heavy giants of the universe.
List
- 10. Eris, 2340 km
- 9. Pluto, 2374 km
- 8. Mercury, 4879.4 km
- 7. Mars, 6780 km
- 6. Venus, 12,103.6 km
- 5. Earth, 12742 km
- 4. Neptune, 49,244 km
- 3. Uranus, 50,724 km
- 2. Saturn, 116464 km
- 1. Jupiter, 139822 km
10. Eris, 2340 km
Eris is one of the largest known dwarf planets in our solar system. It is about the same size as Pluto, but three times further from the Sun.
When Eris was first discovered in 2005, astronomers thought it was much larger than Pluto, and even wondered if Eris could be the 10th planet in our solar system.
Ultimately, however, the discovery of Eris and the study of her being such a small planet caused astronomers to lower Pluto's status in 2006 to the level of a dwarf planet. This decision remains controversial to this day, which makes Eris's name quite speaking.
«Eris is the Greek goddess of contention, " Said astronomer Mike Brown, a member of the Eris research team, in a statement from the California Institute of Technology.
9. Pluto, 2374 km
Pluto is the largest member of a group of objects that rotate in a disk-shaped zone beyond the orbit of Neptune, called the Kuiper Belt. This distant kingdom is inhabited by thousands of miniature ice worlds that formed at the beginning of our solar system about 4.5 billion years ago.
Named after the Roman king of the underworld, Pluto has served as an amazing source of conflict in the astronomical community and for space lovers everywhere. In a controversial decision in 2006, Pluto was officially stripped of its planetary status, leaving our solar system with only eight planets.
8. Mercury, 4879.4 km
Along with Venus, Earth and Mars, Mercury is one of the rocky planets. It has a hard surface covered with craters. It has a subtle atmosphere and it has no moons. Mercury loves to keep things simple.
This small planet rotates slowly compared to Earth, so one day lasts a long time. Mercury takes 59 Earth days to complete one full revolution. A year on Mercury passes quickly. It makes one revolution around the Sun in just 88 Earth days. If you lived on Mercury, you would have a birthday every three months!
7. Mars, 6780 km
Over the past fifteen years our understanding of state and evolution Mars significantly advanced thanks to the success of many space missions, either in orbit or on the surface of Mars (the Mars Express orbital vehicle, the MER Spirit and Opportunity rovers, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the Phoenix lander, the Curiosity rover, the MAVEN orbiter, the ExoMars / Trace Gas orbiter and finally, InSight).
Thanks to these new available data, we can now solve the basic issues concerning our home planet. While Mars Express and MRO allowed us to better understand the geology, mineralogy and composition of the planet’s bowels on a large scale, the MER rovers and Curiosity provided us with an analysis of rock samples and their environment.
6. Venus, 12,103.6 km
Venus was one of five planets - along with Mercury, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn - known in ancient times, and its movements were observed and studied for centuries before the invention of advanced astronomical instruments.
The appearances of Venus were recorded by the Babylonians, who equated it with the goddess Ishtar, around 3000 BC, and this is also mentioned in astronomical records of other ancient civilizations, including China, Central America, Egypt and Greece.
Being very close to Earth, Venus was observed by ancient astronomers from different cultures many times, however, the first accurate observation was made in 1610 by Galileo.
5. Earth, 12742 km
Earth, our home planet, is a world unlike any other. The third planet from the Sun, the Earth, is the only place in the known Universe where life is claimed to be.
Although we do not feel this, the Earth moves in its orbit at an average speed of 18.5 miles per second. During this circuit, our planet is on average 93 million miles from the Sun, the distance that light travels about eight minutes.
Astronomers define this distance as one astronomical unit (AU), a measure that serves as a convenient space criterion.
4. Neptune, 49,244 km
Neptune - the eighth planet from the sun. It was the first planet that predicted its existence using mathematical calculations before it was actually seen through a telescope on September 23, 1846.
Due to irregularities in the orbit of Uranus, the French astronomer Alexis Bouvard suggested that the cause could be gravitational attraction from another celestial body.
Despite the great distance from the Sun, which means that it receives little sunlight, Neptune’s wind can reach 1,500 miles per hour (2,400 km / h), the fastest of all detected in the solar system. These winds were associated with a large dark storm that Voyager 2 tracked in the southern hemisphere of Neptune in 1989.
3. Uranus, 50,724 km
Uranus has a blue-green color due to methane in its hydrogen-helium atmosphere. The planet is often called the ice giant, because at least 80% of its mass is a liquid mixture of water, methane and ammonia ice.
Unlike other planets of the solar system, Uranus is tilted so much that it actually rotates around the Sun on its side, and its axis of rotation is almost directed towards the star.
The magnetic poles of most planets are usually more or less aligned with the axis along which they rotate, but the magnetic field of Uranus is tilted, and its magnetic axis is tilted almost 60 degrees from the axis of rotation of the planet. This leads to the appearance of a strange one-sided magnetic field for Uranus, in which the field strength on the surface of the northern hemisphere is 10 times greater than its strength on the surface of the southern hemisphere.
2. Saturn, 116464 km
Name Saturn descends from the Roman god of agriculture, which is equated with the Greek deity Kronos, one of the titans and the father of Zeus (Roman god Jupiter).
Being the farthest of the planets known to ancient observers, Saturn was also noted as the slowest moving. At a distance of 9.5 times the Earth’s distance from the Sun, Saturn needs approximately 29.5 Earth years to complete one solar revolution.
The Italian astronomer Galileo in 1610 was the first to observe Saturn with a telescope. Although he saw strangeness in the appearance of Saturn, the low resolution of his instrument did not allow him to discern the true nature of the planet's rings.
1. Jupiter, 139822 km
Jupiter - the largest planet in the solar system. Appropriately, he was named after the king of the gods in Roman mythology. Similarly, the ancient Greeks called the planet after Zeus, king of the Greek pantheon.
Jupiter is more than twice as massive as all the other planets combined. If a huge planet were about 80 times more massive, it would actually become a star, not a planet. The huge volume of Jupiter can accommodate more than 1300 Earths. This means that if Jupiter was the size of a basketball, the Earth would be the size of a grape.