The Solar System

The Sun is a star, Rigel is also a star. We name the stars just like we name the planets.

Our solar system consists of The Sun and all the planets that go around it including moons, asteroids and comets. To say that The Sun is the biggest star in our solar system simply doesn't make sense because it is the only star in it.

Now, our solar system is inside a galaxy where there are approximately 200 BILLION stars, some are bigger some are smaller than The Sun. The closest star to us after The Sun, is so far away that it is impractical to measure distances in miles, so we have to measure distances in light-years (one light-year is the distance light would travel in one year, light travels at 18600 miles per second, therefore, one light-year equals 5,865,696,000,000 miles). The closest visible star to our solar system is about 4.3 light-years away and that is far enough to make it seem like a little dot of light to the naked eye despite it being about the same size as The Sun.

You can see the whole solar system and its moons on NASA's Solar System Exploration website (solarsystem.nasa.gov). It provides detailed information on each planet, its moons, and various missions exploring our solar system.

Galileo was the first person to observe celestial objects using a telescope. His findings supported the notion proposed by Copernicus that the planets orbited the sun rather than Earth and that Earth orbited the sun rather than the other way around.

The galaxy in which Earth is located is classified as a(n)

The heliocentric model of the solar system, which places the Sun at the center with the planets orbiting around it, was proposed by Nicolaus Copernicus in the 16th century. This model replaced the geocentric model, which had Earth at the center of the universe.

No, we have not seen any evidence of a black hole in our solar system.

Venus is typically described as being a yellowish-white or cream color when viewed from Earth. This color comes from the thick clouds of sulfuric acid that completely cover the planet's surface, reflecting sunlight.

Mercury is a heavy metal with a density of about 13.6 grams per cubic centimeter. Its weight will vary depending on the volume or amount of mercury present.

Pluto is still in our solar system, it is just not considered a planet anymore. Scientists looked more closely and decided that Pluto is not a planet based on four main reasons:

1. Pluto's tiny, tiny size

2. Pluto's orbit is not even close to being elliptical (a normal planet orbit)

3. Pluto's moon is about half of the planet's size and they both revolve around each other; moons are not supposed to be even close to 1/2 the size of the planet

4. Pluto is just outside a major icy comet belt in which those comets look quite similar to Pluto.

Pluto is still somewhat considered a planet, it is just not considered one of the major planets anymore (Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Venus, etc.). It has been "demoted" to a dwarf planet.

Venus is often called Earth's twin because it is of a similar size although Earth would be slightly larger.

In order of size, biggest to smallest, the planets of the solar system go thusly:

Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, Uranus, Earth, Venus, Mars, Mercury, and Pluto if it were still a planet.

Yes, our solar system has eight official planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Additionally, there are other celestial bodies like dwarf planets, moons, asteroids, and comets in our solar system.

The sun is a main-sequence star that provides light and heat to the solar system. It is a massive sphere of hot plasma that generates energy through nuclear fusion in its core. Its gravitational force holds the solar system together.

Gliese 581 is located in the constellation Libra. It is a red dwarf star with multiple planets, one of which, Gliese 581g, was once considered a potentially habitable exoplanet due to being in the star's habitable zone.

Ultraviolet light from the sun can cause skin cancer if you are exposed to enough of it for a sufficiently long time. If untreated, skin cancer can be fatal.

Staring directly at the sun can cause permanent or temporary blindness, depending upon circumstances.

Using the Hubble Space Telescope we have seen 13 billion light years into space, these are some of the very first galaxies to form after the big bang. [Search for "hubble space telescope ultra deep field images" to see the actual images.]

Although technology is always improving, we can never see much further than this point in time.

The problem is the time it takes for light to travel to Earth. The light we see from these very first galaxies have been travelling for 13 billion years to reach us, so really we are looking back in time. In them 13 billion years the light has been travelling to us, the universe has already expanded another 13 billion years. The reality is that many of the stars that make up these galaxies no longer exist in the same way we are seeing them today.

Theoretically, if the edge of the universe emitted visible light and stopped expanding today, we would still have to wait 13.7 billion years (the current age of the universe) before we would be able to notice. Therefore how far we can see is always governed by the time it takes for light to reach us.

If you think about it - the light we see from these very first galaxies was emitted before life and the Earth even existed! Bare in mind that light travels so fast it could go around the Earth 7 times in 1 second...

Neptune is the eighth planet from the sun. It is about the size of its neighboring planet, Uranus. It has a Great Dark Spot that swirls in its atmosphere.
it is located between uranus and the kuiper belt.

Comets have been compared to "dirty snowballs"; rocks and dust held together by various types of ice. In deep space, everything cools down because the Sun is so far away, and several elements that we think of as "gasses" are frozen solid in comets.

As the comet approaches the Sun, the Sun's heat begins to melt some of the surface layers into gas, and the sunlight hitting the gas is reflected back to Earth as the "tail" of the comet. Some comets have been known to explode, as the heat of the sun melts a large ice pocket into vapor and breaks off pieces of the comet's core.

Currently, there are signs of wind on Pluto, but no evidence yet, until the NASA spacecraft arrives there in 2015. To have "wind" on the surface of any planet requires the presence of an atmosphere. If an atmosphere exists, then there will be areas of higher and lower pressure and therefore a pressure gradient between the two points, hence a wind blows to equalise pressure overall. Given the outgassing that accompanies Pluto's closest approach to the Sun, there may be measurable flows of sublimated gases.

Heliocentric is the idea that the sun is the centre of the universe. Copernicus was not the first person to come up with the idea. It had been around at least since the 4th century BC, so around 1900 years before Copernicus. Many people had worked on this theory over those centuries, and he used some of their ideas to form his own. His was the first where the idea of computing the locations of the planets was introduced based on heliocentrism, although similar ideas of calculating positions of planets had also been around before him. Some of his ideas are still used. He published his ideas in a book in 1543, but he had been working on his ideas for many years before that.

He reasoned that since parallax could not be observed for celestial objects near the sun, then the earth was stationary. This erroneous assumption was because at the time he had no way of knowing that celestial objects were so far away that their parallax angles were too small to detect.
He reasoned that since parallax could not be observed for celestial objects near the sun, then the earth was stationary. This erroneous assumption was because at the time he had no way of knowing that celestial objects were so far away that their parallax angles were too small to detect =) Hope it helped. I had the same question

uranus is located near your bladder.(lol) a billion miles away from the sun.

The sun is in the middle of the Solar System.

Yes and no. It was decided on August 24, 2006 that Pluto be classified a dwarf planet. Because dwarf planets are a subclassification of planet, it would be accurate to call Pluto a planet, in a general setting (bearing in mind, though, that there are 10+ other dwarf planets in our solar system, some larger than Pluto).

round but some rounder than others. Every object is in an orbit which is an ellipse. The planets are in orbits which look almost exactly like circles with an offset centre, but some comets and dwarf planets have orbits with a high eccentricity.