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It consists of Nine Planets and 61 known Moons
Which are captives of the Sun's gravity well.
What do we know about the star at the centre of our Solar System ?
Our sun
( The Greeks called it Helios and the Romans called it in Latin
Sol ) is a G2 type star or a yellow star. The sun has a diameter
of 1.39 million kilometres and over 500 times the mass of all the
other objects in the Solar System, including all the planets and
their moons.
To put the suns size in perspective, it has as much mass as 1.3
million Earths, 75% of this mass is Hydrogen and 24% Helium. The
sun is incredibly hot, it's core is approximately 15 million °C
and its surface temperature is approximately 6000°C. The Sun
produces 386 billion billion megawatts every single second, this
stupendous energy output is achieved by the conversion by nuclear
fusion of 700 million tons of Hydrogen every second. The sun is a
middle aged star, about 4.5 Billion years old and has ample fuel
for another 5 Billion years.
Where is our Solar
System ?
It is situated
in one of the outer spiral arms of the Galaxy called " The Milky
Way ", it is positioned 28,000 light years from the Milky Ways
Galactic Centre. The coordinates of the Centre of Milky Way for
our current Century is - Right ascension 17 hours, 45.6 minutes,
Declination -28 degrees 56 minutes, at a distance of 28 light
years, Relative to the Planet Earth.
How big is The Milky
Way ?
The Milky Way
is NOT just BIG it's VERY BIG. The Milky Way Consists of 200 to 400 billion stars and probably
in excess of a Trillion times the mass of our own Solar System.
The Milky Way is a disc shape with spiralling arms, If we were
able to travel at the speed of light, it
would take approximately 100,000 years to cross from one side to the other.
What are the Planets
in our Solar System - how many are there ?
There are nine
planets, each is listed below starting with
the nearest to the sun.
Facts and
Info about the Planets
in our Solar System
|
|
Distance from
the Sun |
Diameter |
Mass |
|
Mercury |
58 million
Km |
4880 km |
3.30e23 kg |
|
Venus |
108 million Km |
12100 km |
4.87e24 kg |
|
Earth |
150 million Km |
12756 km |
5.97e24 kg |
|
Mars |
228 million Km |
6800 Km |
4.20e26 kg |
|
Jupiter |
780 million Km |
142984 km |
1.90e27 kg |
|
Saturn |
1427 million Km |
120536 km |
5.70e26 kg |
|
Uranus |
2871 million Km |
51118 km |
8.69e25 kg |
|
Neptune |
4497 million Km |
49572 km |
1.03e26 kg |
|
Pluto |
5914 million Km |
2320 km |
1.29e22 kg |
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