Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and possibly Planet Nine are the planets in the solar system.

The edge of the solar system is close to the sun. The Oort Cloud is believed to surround the solar system.

What sounds do planets make?

Kids have known since 1930 that the solar system has nine planets. Astronomers began to argue about whether or not Pluto was a planet in the late 1990's. The solar system's true planets were reduced to just eight after the International Astronomical Union decided in 2006 to designate Pluto as a "dwarf planet".

It would follow Neptune on the list if you included Pluto. Two of the reasons it was demoted were that it is way out there and on a wildly tilted elliptical path.

Astronomers are still looking for a ninth planet in our solar system after mathematical evidence of its existence was revealed in January. It is thought that the "Planet Nine" is about 10 times the mass of Earth and 5,000 times the mass of Pluto.

There are places on Earth that look like planets.

Types of planets in the solar system

The planets closest to the sun are called the "terrestrial planets" because they are rocky. Pluto has a rocky surface but has never been grouped with the other four planets.

The Jovian planets are sometimes referred to as Jupiter-like planets because of their large size. They're mostly made of gases like hydrogen, helium and ammonia rather than rocks, although some may have a solid core.

The order of the planets is based on size.

If you ordered the planets by size, they would be Mercury, Mars, Venus, Earth, Neptune, Uranus, and Jupiter.

The ice giants of Neptune and Uranus are sometimes referred to as the gas giants. According to the Planetary Society, Uranus and Neptune have more atmospheric water and ice forming molecule, such as methane, hydrogen sulfide and phosphene, that crystallise into clouds in the planets' frigid conditions. According to the U.S. National Library of Medicine methane can be seen at minus .

What is (and isn't) a planet?

A true planet is one that circles the sun without being a satellite and is large enough to be rounded by its own gravity.

As astronomer discovered more and more planet-like objects in the solar system, the problem of what should and shouldn't be considered a planet became a problem. The bodies that didn't make the cut were reclassified as dwarf planets.

The problem with the dwarf planet is that it doesn't clear its neighborhood of debris, it shares its space with a lot of other objects. There is still controversy surrounding the demotion of Pluto.

There are other small, round worlds in the dwarf planet category according to the IAU planet definition.

There is a round object between Mars and Jupiter. When it was discovered in 1802, it was thought to be a planet, but later it was found to be an asteroid. It was so large that it didn't fit in with the other asteroids. Astronomers thought of it as a dwarf planet in 2006 rather than a planet.

The eight true planets in our solar system are moving from one place to another.

The sun

Illustration of the Parker Solar Probe and the sun.

An artist's depiction of Parker Solar Probe studying the sun. (Image credit: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory)
(opens in new tab)

99% of the solar system's mass is contained in the sun. Most of the heat and light that makes life possible is lost. The sun is slightly off-center in the ellipses of the planets.

To learn more about the sun's composition and to make better predictions about space and Earth, NASA has a fleet of satellites.

Mercury: The closest planet to the sun

Mercury against the black backdrop of space.

Mercury is the closest planet to the sun. The planet is pictured here as seen by NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft. (Image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie )
(opens in new tab)

The smallest planet in the solar system is Mercury, which is only a little larger than the moon. Mercury is so close to the sun that it can travel in only 88 days.

It is hot enough to melt lead on a hot day. The temperature on the night side is minus 190 C.

There are quick Mercury facts.

It's visible to the naked eye.

It's named for the Roman gods' messenger.

The diameter is 3,031 miles.

The planet has 88 earth days.

The day is 58.6 Earth days.

The number of moons is zero.

Mercury's atmosphere is mostly made up of oxygen, sodium, hydrogen, helium and potassium. Our moon is pockmarked with craters because it is so thin that it cannot receive incoming meteorites.

The four-year mission of NASA's MESSENGER yielded incredible discoveries. Water ice and frozen organic compounds were found at Mercury's north pole, as well as that volcanism shaped the planet's surface.

Mercury's formation is related to how it was formed.

Venus: Earth's solar system twin

Image of Venus against black backdrop of space.

A newly processed (2020) image of Venus that was captured by NASA's Mariner 10 spacecraft.  (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
(opens in new tab)

The hottest planet in the solar system is Venus. The planet is an extreme example of the greenhouse effect because of it's toxic atmosphere.

Venus facts are quick and easy to understand.

It's visible to the naked eye.

It's named for the Roman goddess of love and beauty.

The diameter is 7,521 miles.

The planet has an average of 222 Earth days.

241 Earth days are celebrated on this day.

The number of moons is zero.

Venus has an average temperature of 900 F. The pressure at the surface would crush you. Venus is spinning in the opposite direction of most of the other planets.

Venus is often referred to as Earth's twin as they are both similar in size and have many mountains and volcanoes. The planets are not the same.

The Greeks thought Venus was a different object in the morning and in the evening. Venus is often brighter than other objects in the sky.

What happened to Venus?

Earth: Our home planet, filled with life

Earth covered with swirling white cloud and deep blue oceans.

One of the most detailed images of Earth. The montage was created from photographs taken by the Visible/Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument onboard the Suomi NPP satellite. (Image credit: NASA)
(opens in new tab)

Our home planet is Earth. Two-thirds of the planet is covered in water. The only planet known to harbor life is Earth, which is rich in nitrogen and oxygen.

Facts about Earth.

The German word for "the ground" is the origin of the name.

The diameter is 7,926 miles.

The time period is 347.94 days.

The day was 23 hours long.

The number of moons is one.

At the equator, the Earth rotates at a rate of 1,532 feet per second. The planet is moving at more than 30 km per second.

You have to see the impact craters.

Mars: The solar system's Red Planet

Rusty red Mars against black backdrop of space.

Mosaic of the Valles Marineris hemisphere of Mars. The image was created from 102 Viking Orbiter images of Mars. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
(opens in new tab)

There are four planets from the sun. The planet is covered in iron oxide dust that makes it red in color. Mars is rocky, has mountains, valleys and canyons, and has a variety of storm systems.

At one point billions of years ago, Mars may have been a much warmer, wet world with rivers and oceans. Mars' atmosphere is too thin for liquid water to be present on the surface for a long time. There are sheets of water ice the size of California beneath the surface of Mars.

Facts about Mars quickly.

It's visible to the naked eye.

The god of war is named that way.

The diameter is 4,217 miles.

More than one Earth day.

The number of moons is two.

The conditions for life on ancient Mars are thought to have existed. The Red Planet is one of the most explored planets in the solar system due to the hope that there may be signs of past life.

It takes a long time to get to Mars.

The asteroid belt

The asteroid belt runs between Mars and Jupiter. According to NASA, there are between 1.1 and 1.9 million asteroids in the main asteroid belt that are less than a mile in diameter.

This is where the dwarf planet Ceres is located, which is about 980 km in diameter. There are a number of asteroids that are close to the sun that can cause them to collide with Earth or other planets.

Jupiter: The largest planet in our solar system

Image of Jupiter shows bands of orange and yellow sweeping across the surface.

This stunning image of Jupiter, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, was captured on Aug. 25, 2020 and shows ripples in the planet's atmosphere, Jupiter's famous Great Red Spot and the planet's striking colors.  (Image credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, A. Simon (Goddard Space Flight Center), M.H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley), and the OPAL team)
(opens in new tab)

The biggest planet in the solar system is Jupiter. According to NASA, the gas giant is twice as big as all the other planets.

There are quick Jupiter facts.

It's visible to the naked eye.

The ruler of the Roman gods was named that way.

The diameter is 86,181 miles.

The planet has an average of 11.9 Earth years.

On the day, Earth hours are 9.8.

There are 78 moons, 53 of which have been confirmed.

The clouds are colorful due to different types of trace gases.

Jupiter's Great Red Spot is a giant storm more than 10,000 miles wide and was first observed in the late 19th century. For the last 150 years, it has raged at more than 400 mph.

The largest moon in the solar system is located on Jupiter.

There are facts about the largest Jovian moons.

Saturn: The ringed jewel of the solar system

Sandy yellow Saturn surrounded by white grey rings.

The Hubble Space Telescope captured this image of Saturn during its northern hemisphere summer on July 4, 2020. (Image credit: NASA, ESA, A. Simon (Goddard Space Flight Center), M.H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley), and the OPAL Team)
(opens in new tab)

The sixth planet from the sun is known for its ring system. There are other planets in the solar system.

Facts about the moon.

It's visible to the naked eye.

The god of agriculture is named that way.

The diameter is 74,900 miles.

The Earth's distance from the equator is 29.5 Earth years.

About 10 o'clock in the day.

There are 83 moons, 53 of which have been confirmed.

Were you aware?

If you put it in a bathtub, it would float because it is less dense than water. You just need a big tub.

Galileo thought that the object he was studying was a planet and two large moons. The astronomer didn't know he was seeing a planet with rings, so he entered a symbol with one large circle and two smaller ones in his notebook as a nouns. Christiaan Huygens proposed that they were rings more than four decades ago.

Scientists don't know how the rings formed. There are many moons on the planet that is mostly hydrogen and helium.

There is a question about how far away isSaturn.

Blue pink Uranus surrounded by a thin ring structure.

X-rays from Uranus have been detected using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory.  (Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXO/University College London/W. Dunn et al; Optical: W.M. Keck Observatory)
(opens in new tab)

It's the seventh planet from the sun, and it's an odd one.

The same chemical that makes rotten eggs smell bad is in the clouds. It is like Venus in rotation. Unlike Venus or any other planet, it's equator is almost at right angles to its path.

Facts about Uranus in a few seconds.

William Herschel was thought to be a star in the 17th century.

It's named for the mythical figure of heaven.

The diameter is 31,763 miles.

84 Earth years is the planet's average.

18 Earth hours are the day's day.

The number of moons is 27.

Astronomers think that an object twice the size of Earth caused Uranus to tilt. The sun beats down on one pole or the other for 84 Earth-years at a time when it tilts.

Rock and ice are thought to have been knocked out by the collision. The planets 27 moons became these. The planet is blue-green due to methane in its atmosphere. There are 13 sets of rings.

The lowest temperature ever recorded in the solar system was minus 372.56 degrees F. The average temperature of the planet is below zero.

Is it possible that Uranus formed?

Neptune: A giant, stormy blue planet

Deep blue Neptune against black backdrop of space.

Neptune's winds travel at more than 1,500 mph, and are the fastest planetary winds in the solar system. (Image credit: NASA/JPL)
(opens in new tab)

Neptune is the most frigid planet in the solar system. At the top of the clouds, the average temperature of Neptune is minus 343 degrees.

Facts about Neptune.

The discovery took place in 1847.

The god of water is named after it.

The diameter is 30,825 miles.

The planet has an altitude of 165 earth years.

19 Earth hours are the day's day.

The number of moons is fourteen.

It is known for its strong winds and is the same size as Uranus. The planet is much closer to the sun than to Earth.

Neptune was the first planet to be predicted using math. Irregularities in the path of Uranus led to the suggestion that another planet may be tugging on it. Calculating helped find Neptune in a telescope. Neptune is much larger than Earth and has a rocky core.

There is something odd going on inside Neptune.

Trans-Neptunian region

From the last decade of the 20th century up to now, they have found more than a thousand of the icy material that was thought to be in the Kuiper Belt. Hundreds of thousands of icy bodies larger than 100 km wide are believed to be in the Kuiper Belt.

There is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt. It is not the only one, recent additions include Make make and Haumea. Quaoar is massive enough to be considered a dwarf planet, but not yet. It is the first dwarf planet discovered in the Oort Cloud. The first flyby of the Pluto system took place in July of 2015.

Pluto: Once a planet, now a dwarf planet

Pluto with patches of rusty brown and sandy yellow on the surface.

An enhanced color global view of Pluto showing the heart-shaped area now named 'Tombaugh Regio'.  (Image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute)
(opens in new tab)

Unlike any other planet in the solar system, the ninth planet from the sun is still around.

There are quick facts about the dwarf planet.

The discovery was made in 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh.

It is named after the Roman god of the Underworld.

The diameter is 1,430 miles.

It's an Earth year's worth of 257 Earth years.

There are 6.4 Earth days per day.

The number of moons is five.

It's smaller than Earth's moon, it's elliptical, and it's not the same plane as all the other planets.

It's smaller than Earth's moon, it's elliptical, and it's not the same plane as all the other planets.

The eighth planet from the sun was Pluto. It became the most distant planet in the solar system after crossing Neptune's path in 1999. The world is rocky and cold.

The scientists thought it might be a piece of rock. The first flyby of the system on July 14, 2015, changed the view of the system.

There are glaciers, mountains of ice water, icy dunes, and perhaps even cryovolcanoes that erupt icy lava made of water, methane or ammonia.

There is a question about why isn't Pluto a planet.

Planet Nine: A planet search at solar system's edge

Artist's illustration of mysterious planet 9.

The hypothesized Planet Nine is estimated to be about 10 times the mass of Earth (Image credit: ESO/Tom Ruen/nagualdesign)
(opens in new tab)

There is a possibility of a ninth planet that is 10 times the mass of the Earth.

Scientists haven't seen planet nine. The region at the fringe of the solar system that is home to icy rocks left over from the birth of the solar system was inferred from its effect on other objects. These objects are called trans-Neptunian objects because they have the same elliptical or oblong shape.

The evidence for Planet Nine was described in a study by scientists at the Caltech. The research is based on mathematical models and computer simulations, which were used to observe six other smaller Kuiper Belt objects.

There is a hypothesis that Planet Nine might not be a planet at all. According to Newsweek, Jaku Scholtz of Durham University and James Unwin of the University of Illinois at Chicago believe that it could be a primordial black hole that formed soon after the Bigbang. Unlike black holes that form from the collapse of giant stars, primordial black holes are thought to have formed less than a second after the big bang, and this one would be difficult to detect.

Astronomers haven't found Planet 9 yet. Thousands of tentative candidate sources were found in a recent sky survey, but no one could confirm them.

There's a planet called Nibiru.

The edge of the solar system

The heliosphere is the edge of the solar system and contains charged particles from the sun. The limit of the heliopause is thought to be about fifteen billion km from the sun.

The Oort Cloud is thought to be between 2,000 and 5,000AU from the sun. From the sun, the Oort Cloud's outer edge can reach as much as 100,000AU. The distance is equal to 93,000,000 miles. Billions of objects are found in the Oort Cloud according to NASA Science.

Solar system formation and discovery

A dark cloud of gas and dust collapsed 4.5 billion years ago. According to NASA Science, the cloud was flattened into a disk as it shrunk.

The heat and pressure caused hydrogen atoms to combine. Our sun was formed as a result of the nuclear reactions.

Smaller clumps of material further from the sun formed inside the spinning disk after the sun had accumulated most of the available matter. They became planets, dwarf planets and moons because of their gravity. Our solar system is made up of asteroids, comets and small moons.

The solar system formed.

Astronomers have followed points of light for thousands of years. The ancient Greeks called them planets. The invention of the telescope added the Asteroid Belt and many of the world's moons. Dozens of probes were launched to explore our system in the early days of the space age.

The five human-made objects that have crossed the threshold into space are:

There is a question about how much of the solar system is made of outer space.

Additional resources

Take a closer look at the solar system with these interactive resources from NASA. This educational material is from the European Space Agency. This interactive orrery from NASA lets you see where the planets are in the sun.

Bibliography

The NASA solar system exploration is open.

Prialnik, Dina K., barucci, and Young are authors. The Trans-Neptunian Solar System is currently open.

"Piriani, Simona, and others." There are consequences of planetary migration on the minor bodies.

James Unwin. If Planet 9 is a primordial black hole, what would it look like? The physical review letters were published in 2020.

Brown, Batygin, and Michael E. There are constraints on the location of planet nine.

Raymond, Sean N. The accretion of the inner Solar System is being built.