Facts and Info about
the  Solar System

What is a Solar System, what and where is ours ?
What Planets are in ours ?


What is a Solar System ?
A Solar System consists of all the Space en-globed by the Planets and other bodies captured in a Stars Gravity Well. Any star with one or more planets captive within its gravitational field becomes by definition a Solar System. The included Planets may have planetary objects trapped in their own Gravity well's and these are referred to as moon's. Facts and Info about the Solar System

Our own Solar System

The Sun, the Center of our Solar System

It consists of Nine Planets and 61 known Moons Which are captives of the Sun's gravity well.

What do we know about the star at the centre of our Solar System ?
Our sun ( The Greeks called it Helios and the Romans called it in Latin Sol ) is a G2 type star or a yellow star. The sun has a diameter of 1.39 million kilometres and over 500 times the mass of all the other objects in the Solar System, including all the planets and their moons.
To put the suns size in perspective, it has as much mass as 1.3 million Earths, 75% of this mass is Hydrogen and 24% Helium. The sun is incredibly hot, it's core is approximately 15 million °C and its surface temperature is approximately 6000°C. The Sun produces 386 billion billion megawatts every single second, this stupendous energy output is achieved by the conversion by nuclear fusion of 700 million tons of Hydrogen every second. The sun is a middle aged star, about 4.5 Billion years old and has ample fuel for another 5 Billion years.

Where is our Solar System ?
It is situated in one of the outer spiral arms of the Galaxy called " The Milky Way ", it is positioned 28,000 light years from the Milky Ways Galactic Centre. The coordinates of the Centre of Milky Way for our current Century is - Right ascension 17 hours, 45.6 minutes, Declination -28 degrees 56 minutes, at a distance of 28 light years, Relative to the Planet Earth.

How big is The Milky Way ?
The Milky Way is NOT just BIG it's VERY BIG. The Milky Way Consists of 200 to 400 billion stars and probably in excess of a Trillion times the mass of our own Solar System. The Milky Way is a disc shape with spiralling arms, If we were able to travel at the speed of light, it would take approximately 100,000 years to cross from one side to the other.

What are the Planets in our Solar System - how many are there ?
There are nine planets, each is listed below starting with the nearest to the sun.

Facts and Info about the Planets in our Solar System
 

 

Distance from the SunDiameterMass

Mercury

58 million Km4880 km3.30e23 kg
Venus108 million Km12100 km4.87e24 kg
Earth150 million Km12756 km5.97e24 kg
Mars228 million Km6800 Km4.20e26 kg
Jupiter780 million Km142984 km1.90e27 kg
Saturn1427 million Km120536 km5.70e26 kg
Uranus2871 million Km51118 km8.69e25 kg
Neptune4497 million Km49572 km1.03e26 kg
Pluto5914 million Km2320 km1.29e22 kg

Facts about Space

Facts and Info about the Visitors to our Solar System

Regular but temporary visitors to our include Comets, The best known are Halley's Comet and Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9.

Planets and Solar System Index

Facts and Info about the  Solar System and all its Planets

Our Galaxy - Our Sun - Mercury - Earth - Venus - Mars - Jupiter - Saturn - Uranus - Neptune - Pluto


Highly Recommended sites and Facts about Our Solar System