The diameter of Mars is about 6,787 km, which is about half the diameter of the Earth; and the average distance of this planet from the Sun is 228,000,000 km and 142 million miles (229 million kilometers) from the Earth.
Neptune is now the farthest planet and is a cold, dark world nearly three billion miles (5 billion kilometers) from the Sun. The stars, which look lonely when seen from Earth, actually exist in groups or clusters that are better called Galaxies or Nebulae. The planet Venus has no satellite of its own, but it shines in the sky like a star, which makes most people refer to it as a star.
Mercury, the smallest and fastest planet, is the closest planet to the Sun and revolves around it every 88 Earth days. Jupiter is a massive planet, twice as big as all the other planets put together and has a centennial storm bigger than Earth.
Are there 13 planets in our Solar System?
Revolving around the Sun in just 88 days, Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun and also the smallest, only slightly larger than Earth’s Moon. The key difference between a planet and a dwarf planet is the type of objects that share its orbit around the Sun. It soon became clear that either all of them had to be called planets, or Pluto and bodies like it had to be reclassified. Like the planets, dwarf planets are usually round (Haumea looks like an over-inflated football) and orbit the Sun.
The planets of the solar system in order from the Sun are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. This is because Uranus and Neptune have more atmospheric water and other ice-forming molecules, such as methane, hydrogen sulfide and phosphene, which crystallize into clouds in the planets’ frigid conditions, according to the Planetary Society.
What are the 12 planets called?
Because Pluto is not large enough to dominate its orbit, it cannot be called a planet, according to the IAU. It added that quality papers published in scientific journals should and will continue to be part of the process of determining planet status. But, as you may have noticed, the new additions to the ranks of planets are actually dwarf planets or plutons, not traditional (so-called primary) planets like Earth and Mars. He noted that barycenters are used to define and describe double stars, so the concept should apply to planets as well.
In addition to reaffirming the status of puny Pluto – whose detractors insist it should not be a planet – the new alignment would include 2003 UB313, the solar system’s farthest known object and nicknamed Xena; Pluto’s largest moon, Charon; and the asteroid Ceres, which was a planet in the 19th century before being demoted. And if astronomers determine that the asteroids Pallas, Vesta and Hygeia are also round, they will also have to be considered planets, said Owen Gingerich, a Harvard historian and astronomer emeritus who led the committee.
