[97] Some of them are potentially hazardous objects. ", Son of the King of Naples in "The Tempest. ", Named by Herschel's son John in early 19th century for the king of the fairies in Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream. Daughter of Zeus and the Moon goddess Selene, goddess of the dew, and sister of Pandia. The largest known centaur, 10199 Chariklo, has a diameter of about 250 km. By browsing our site you agree to our use of cookies. [69], The interplanetary medium is home to at least two disc-like regions of cosmic dust. The force of gravity there would be much stronger than here at home. [33][35] Together, gases and ices are referred to as volatiles.[36]. [67] Venus and Mars do not have magnetic fields, and as a result the solar wind is causing their atmospheres to gradually bleed away into space. Named by the Romans for their god of war because of its red, bloodlike color. Deimos means "fear" in Greek. A lover of Poseidon. Venus has no natural satellites. The Oort cloud, which is thought to be the source for long-period comets, may also exist at a distance roughly a thousand times further than the heliosphere. Our planetary system is the only one officially called “solar system,” but astronomers have discovered more than 2,500 other stars with planets orbiting them in our galaxy. [58][59], The Sun is a population I star; it has a higher abundance of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium ("metals" in astronomical parlance) than the older population II stars. The images at the beginning of this section show the orbits of the various constituents of the Solar System on different scales. She is the goddess of health and hygiene. An illustration that shows what it might look like to stand on the surface of Kepler-16-b. Astronomy is one of my favorite subjects. The Solar System[b] is the gravitationally bound system of the Sun and the objects that orbit it, either directly or indirectly. It has one known moon, Dysnomia. Norse ocean giant who represents the peaceful sea, a stiller of storms. Named for a Gallic giant who was considered to be the king of the world. Asteroids except for the largest, Ceres, are classified as small Solar System bodies[f] and are composed mainly of refractory rocky and metallic minerals, with some ice. Named by Herschel's son John in the early 19th century for a Giant felled by Hephaestus (or Ares) in the war between the Titans and Olympian gods. Compared to other systems, they have smaller orbital eccentricity. [f] The asteroid belt, which lies between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, mostly contains objects composed, like the terrestrial planets, of rock and metal. The Solar System is located in the Milky Way, a barred spiral galaxy with a diameter of about 100,000 light-years containing more than 100 billion stars. [68] Coronal mass ejections and similar events blow a magnetic field and huge quantities of material from the surface of the Sun. They assigned the correct orbital period, and the satellite was finally confirmed in 1980. [141] The Sun resides in one of the Milky Way's outer spiral arms, known as the Orion–Cygnus Arm or Local Spur. ", J. Kavelaars, B. Gladman, M. Holman, J.-M. Petit, and H. Scholl, Named for a drunken butler in "The Tempest. It was assigned a naming committee under the expectation that it would prove to be a dwarf planet in 2008. The mother of the Graces by Zeus, according to some authors. One of the Nereids, lover of Aeacus and mother of Phocus. [50] The main-sequence phase, from beginning to end, will last about 10 billion years for the Sun compared to around two billion years for all other phases of the Sun's pre-remnant life combined. As they get closer to the Sun, they heat up and leave a trail of glowing dust and gases. Jupiter is a massive planet, twice the size of all other planets combined and has a centuries-old storm that is bigger than Earth. [81] No definitive evidence of current geological activity has been detected on Venus, but it has no magnetic field that would prevent depletion of its substantial atmosphere, which suggests that its atmosphere is being replenished by volcanic eruptions.[82]. In Greek mythology, terrifying monster with the body of a serpent and nine heads that guarded the underworld. Comets are snowballs made up of frozen gas, rock, and dust that orbit the Sun. Of the objects that orbit the Sun indirectly—the moons—two are larger than the smallest planet, Mercury. ", Daughter of the banished duke in Shakespeare's "As You Like It. [120] Some astronomers also classify centaurs as inward-scattered Kuiper belt objects along with the outward-scattered residents of the scattered disc.[121]. Wife of Minos, king of Crete. [94] It was classified as a dwarf planet in 2006 when the definition of a planet was created. While most science fiction calls our sun Sol, and our system the Sol System, the International Astronomical Union (IAU), the body authorized internationally to name stellar objects, calls it “the Solar System”, and our sun, “the Sun”. [98] All four giant planets have rings, although only Saturn's ring system is easily observed from Earth. Galileo imaging and infrared science teams. [142] The Sun lies between 25,000 and 28,000 light-years from the Galactic Centre,[143] and its speed within the Milky Way is about 220 km/s, so that it completes one revolution every 225–250 million years. ", "Astronomers Had it Wrong: Most Stars are Single", "Voyager Enters Solar System's Final Frontier", "Modeling the heliospheric current sheet: Solar cycle variations", "Solar Wind blows some of Earth's atmosphere into space", "Long-term Evolution of the Zodiacal Cloud", "ESA scientist discovers a way to shortlist stars that might have planets", "Origins of Solar System Dust beyond Jupiter", "Frost line or snow line or ice line in the solar system", "Mercury Is Actually the Closest Planet to Every Other Planet", "Collisional stripping of Mercury's mantle", "Climate Change as a Regulator of Tectonics on Venus", "What are the characteristics of the Solar System that lead to the origins of life? Topaz, one of the world’s largest solar power station, as seen from space They are composed largely of refractory minerals, such as the silicates—which form their crusts and mantles—and metals, such as iron and nickel, which form their cores. Other civilizations also named this planet from this attribute; for example, the Egyptians named it "Her Desher," meaning "the red one. Although the Sun dominates the system by mass, it accounts for only about 2% of the angular momentum. Instead of this he granted perpetual virginity, after he had been deceived by his own promises. [51] Solar wind from the Sun created the heliosphere and swept away the remaining gas and dust from the protoplanetary disc into interstellar space, ending the planetary formation process. When a comet enters the inner Solar System, its proximity to the Sun causes its icy surface to sublimate and ionise, creating a coma: a long tail of gas and dust often visible to the naked eye.