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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, this is far from the truth.
During the 20th century, scientists not only assumed that the size of the solar system stretched almost 2 light years – that’s 125 times the distance from the Sun to the Earth – but also that there are many objects beyond Pluto. Just imagine how gigantic objects are next to us!
We bring to your attention a list of the 10 largest planets in the solar system: a rating of the heavy giants of the universe.
10 Erida, 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 as far from the Sun.
When Eris was first discovered in 2005, astronomers thought it was significantly larger than Pluto and even wondered if Eris could be the 10th planet in our solar system.
Ultimately, however, the discovery of Eris and learning that it was such a small planet was the reason astronomers downgraded Pluto to a dwarf planet in 2006. This decision remains controversial to this day, making the name Eris quite telling.
«Eris – Greek goddess of strife astronomer Mike Brown, a member of the Eris research team, said in a statement from the California Institute of Technology.
9. Pluto, 2374 km
Pluto is the largest member of a group of objects that orbit in a disc-shaped zone beyond the orbit of Neptune called the Kuiper Belt. This distant realm is inhabited by thousands of miniature icy worlds that formed at the beginning of our solar system about 4,5 billion years ago.
Named after the Roman king of crime, Pluto has served as a surprising 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 thin atmosphere and has no moons. Mercury likes to keep things simple.
This small planet rotates slowly compared to the Earth, so one day is long. Mercury takes 59 Earth days to complete one full rotation. A year on Mercury goes by quickly. It completes 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 due to the successful operation of many space missions, either in orbit or on the surface of Mars (Mars Express orbiter, MER Spirit and Opportunity rovers, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Phoenix lander, Curiosity rover, MAVEN orbiter, ExoMars / Trace Gas orbiter and finally InSight).
With this new data available, we are now in a position to address major questions regarding our home planet. While Mars Express and MRO have allowed us to better understand the geology, mineralogy, and composition of the planet’s interior on a large scale, the MER and Curiosity rovers have provided us with analysis of rock samples and their environment.
6. Venus, 12103,6 km
Venus was one of the 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.
Appearances of Venus were recorded by the Babylonians, who equated her with the goddess Ishtar, around 3000 BC, and it is also mentioned in the astronomical records of other ancient civilizations, including China, Central America, Egypt, and Greece.
Being very close to the Earth, Venus was observed many times by ancient astronomers from different cultures, but the first accurate observation was made in 1610 by Galileo.
5. Earth, 12742 km
Lands, our home planet, is a world unlike any other. The third planet from the Sun, Earth is the only place in the known universe that is claimed to harbor life.
Although we do not feel it, 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, a distance that light travels about eight minutes.
Astronomers define this distance as one astronomical unit (AU), a measure that serves as a convenient cosmic yardstick.
4. Neptune, 49244 km
Neptune is the eighth planet from the Sun. It was the first planet to predict its existence through mathematical calculations before it was actually seen through a telescope on September 23, 1846.
Due to irregularities in the orbit of Uranus, French astronomer Alexis Bouvard suggested that the gravitational pull from another celestial body could be the cause.
Despite its long distance from the Sun, meaning it receives little sunlight, Neptune’s winds can reach 1500 miles per hour (2400 km/h), the fastest ever found in the solar system. These winds were associated with a large dark storm that Voyager 2 tracked in Neptune’s southern hemisphere in 1989.
3. Uranus, 50724 km
Uran has a blue-green color due to methane in its hydrogen-helium atmosphere. The planet is often called an ice giant because at least 80% of its mass is a liquid mixture of water, methane and ammonia ice.
Unlike other planets in the solar system, Uranus is tilted so much that it actually orbits the Sun on its side, with its axis of rotation almost pointing towards the star.
The magnetic poles of most planets are usually more or less aligned with the axis along which they rotate, but Uranus’s magnetic field is tilted and its magnetic axis is tilted nearly 60 degrees from the planet’s axis of rotation. This results in a strangely one-sided magnetic field for Uranus, where the strength of the field on the surface of the northern hemisphere is 10 times that of the surface of the southern hemisphere.
2. Saturn, 116464 km
First name Saturn comes from the Roman god of agriculture, who is equated with the Greek deity Kronos, one of the Titans and father of Zeus (the Roman god Jupiter).
Being the most distant planet known to ancient observers, Saturn was also noted as the slowest moving planet. At 9,5 times Earth’s distance from the Sun, Saturn takes approximately 29,5 Earth years to complete one solar revolution.
The Italian astronomer Galileo was the first to observe Saturn with a telescope in 1610. Although he saw strangeness in Saturn’s appearance, the low resolution of his instrument prevented him from seeing the true nature of the planet’s rings.
1. Jupiter, 139822 km
Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system. Fittingly, it was named after the king of the gods in Roman mythology. Similarly, the ancient Greeks named the planet after Zeus, king of the Greek pantheon.
Jupiter is more than twice as massive as all the other planets combined. If the huge planet were about 80 times as massive, it would effectively become a star, not a planet. The huge volume of Jupiter can hold more than 1300 Earths. This means that if Jupiter were the size of a basketball, the Earth would be the size of a grape.