Solar System

The Solar System is a group of celestial objects that orbit the sun. It includes the Sun, eight major planets, their moons, and smaller bodies such as asteroids, comets, and dwarf planets. The Sun is at the center of the Solar System, and its gravity keeps all the other objects moving around it. The Solar System formed about 4.6 billion years ago from a large cloud of gas and dust.

The Sun makes up most of the mass in the Solar System and provides light and heat to the planets. It is a huge ball of hot gases, mainly hydrogen and helium, where nuclear reactions release energy. The energy from the Sun allows life to exist on earth and affects the movement and temperature of all planets.

There are eight planets in the Solar System, which are divided into two groups. The four inner planets — mercury, venus, Earth, and mars — are called terrestrial planets because they have solid, rocky surfaces. The four outer planets — jupiter, saturn, uranus, and neptune — are called gas giants or ice giants because they are much larger and made mostly of gases and ices. Between Mars and Jupiter lies the asteroid belt, a region filled with many rocky bodies that orbit the Sun.

Beyond Neptune is the Kuiper Belt, where many icy objects and dwarf planets are found, including pluto. Farther out, there is the Oort Cloud, a distant area believed to contain billions of icy bodies that may become comets when pulled toward the Sun. These regions show that the Solar System extends far beyond the planets we can easily see.

Many planets have natural satellites called moons. Earth has one moon, but Jupiter and Saturn each have more than 80 known moons. Some moons, such as Jupiter’s Europa and Saturn’s Enceladus, may have oceans of water beneath their icy surfaces. In addition to moons, the Solar System contains countless smaller objects like meteoroids and dust.

The Solar System is part of a larger galaxy called the Milky Way. It moves through space together with billions of other stars. Scientists continue to study the Solar System using telescopes and space probes to learn more about how it formed and how the planets and other objects behave in space.