6 days ago · Our solar system includes the Sun, eight planets, five officially named dwarf planets, hundreds of moons, and thousands of asteroids and comets. Get the Facts

Feb 3, 2025 · The Sun is the star at the heart of our solar system. Its gravity holds the solar system together, keeping everything — from the biggest planets to the smallest bits of debris — in its orbit.

Jan 17, 2025 · Our solar system includes the Sun, eight planets, five officially named dwarf planets, hundreds of moons, and thousands of asteroids and comets. Our solar system is located in the Milky Way, a barred spiral galaxy with two major arms, and two minor arms.

Nov 5, 2024 · The Sun is the largest object in our solar system. Its diameter is about 865,000 miles (1.4 million kilometers). Its gravity holds the solar system together, keeping everything from the biggest planets to the smallest bits of debris in orbit around it.

Jan 22, 2025 · The solar system has eight planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. There are five officially recognized dwarf planets in our solar system: Ceres, Pluto, Haumea, Makemake, and Eris.

Mar 15, 2016 · Our solar system is made up of a star—the Sun—eight planets, 146 moons, a bunch of comets, asteroids and space rocks, ice, and several dwarf planets, such as Pluto. The eight planets are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.

Feb 1, 2020 · Our solar system’s largest planet is an average distance of 484 million miles (778 million kilometers) from the Sun. That’s 5.2 AU. Jupiter is the largest of the planets, spanning nearly 1.75 millimeters in diameter on our football field scale.

Feb 18, 2011 · The MESSENGER spacecraft has captured the first portrait of our Solar System from the inside looking out. Comprised of 34 images, the mosaic provides a complement to the Solar System portrait—that one from the outside looking in—taken by Voyager 1 in 1990.

Dec 6, 2017 · This narrow-angle color image of the Earth, dubbed ‘Pale Blue Dot’, is a part of the first ever ‘portrait’ of the solar system taken by Voyager 1. The spacecraft acquired a total of 60 frames for a mosaic of the solar system from a distance of more than 4 billion miles from Earth and about 32 degrees above the ecliptic.

Nov 5, 2024 · Inner Solar System. Planetary Science missions to the inner solar system extend mankind’s presence to the rocky worlds and help to unlock the secrets of the solar systems’ composition, history and evolution, and how life on Earth began.