What Do We Know About Solar System

The edge of the solar system is 1 000 times farther away than pluto.

What do we know about solar system.

Explore our solar system in depth 10 things to know about our solar system. Beyond our own solar system we have discovered thousands of planetary systems orbiting other stars in the milky way. A new discovery on a distant dwarf planet has astronomers rethinking the cosmic limits of our solar system. 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.

That s just how many we ve found so far. We get a figure of around 4 568 billion years if we do that. You might still think of the solar system as extending out to the orbit of the much loved dwarf planet pluto. 10 need to know things about the solar system.

This is the first model that we know about that you start out with a pretty simple structure for the solar nebula from which planets form and end up with the giant planet system that we see. Other solar systems our milky way galaxy is just one of billions of galaxies in the universe. We can look at the oldest meteorites or the ones which show the most extreme lead ratios to try and estimate the age of the solar system. Our solar system consists of our star the sun and everything bound to it by gravity the planets mercury venus earth mars jupiter saturn uranus and neptune dwarf planets such as pluto dozens of moons and millions of asteroids comets and meteoroids.

While earth is only the fifth largest planet in the solar system it is the only world in our solar system with liquid water on the surface. The planetary system we call home is located in an outer spiral arm of the milky way galaxy. It s an idea that lasted for more than 1 000 years dating back to the days of aristotle and ancient greece. Just slightly larger than nearby venus earth is the biggest of the four planets closest to the sun all of which are made of rock and metal.

The world s greatest thinkers originally had the earth at the centre of creation with the sun moon planets and stars circling around us. This means there are potentially thousands of planetary systems like our solar system within the galaxy. The story of our quest to discover how our solar system formed is littered with false starts and one that astronomers are still refining. Our solar system is just one specific planetary system a star with planets orbiting around it.