Planetary-size comparison

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The Solar System consists of the Sun and the other celestial objects gravitationally bound to it: the eight planets, their 165 known moons,^[1] three currently identified dwarf planets (Ceres, Eris, and Pluto) and their four known moons, and billions of small bodies. This last category includes asteroids, Kuiper belt objects, comets, meteoroids, and interplanetary dust.

Objects orbiting the Sun are divided into three classes: planets, dwarf planets, and small Solar System bodies.

A planet is any body in orbit around the Sun that a) has enough mass to form itself into a spherical shape and b) has cleared its immediate neighborhood of all smaller objects. There are eight known planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

Contents 1 Introduction 2 Diametric Values 2.1 Planets 2.2 Dwarf Planets 2.3 Satellites 3 Table 4 Extra Solar Planets 5 Scale comparisons 6 See also 7 Reference Sources 8 External links 9 Gallery

[edit] Introduction

An integral part of the solar family is the inner solar system consisting of the planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars and the satellites of Earth and Mars i.e. the Moon, and Phobos and Deimos.

The Earth is the third planet in order from the Sun and the largest of all of the terrestrial or inner planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars.

But the Earth is itself dwarfed by the gas giants : Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. The plane between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter also contain a vast belt of chunks of rocks called as asteroids which are much smaller in relative comparison.Smaller Kuiper belt objects lay beyond the orbits of the gas giants.

[edit] Diametric Values

[edit] Planets

1. Mercury: 4,880 km
2. Venus: 12,105 km
3. Earth: 12,756 km
4. Mars: 6,797 km
5. Jupiter: 143,884 km
6. Saturn: 120,514 km
7. Uranus: 51,118 km
8. Neptune: 49,557 km

[edit] Dwarf Planets

1. Ceres: 933 km
2. Pluto: 2,300 km
3. Eris: 2,400 km

[edit] Satellites

The following are the diametric values of the 12 largest and significant satellites in our solar system.

1. Ganymede: 5,262 km
2. Titan: 5,150 km
3. Callisto: 4,806 km
4. Io: 3,642 km
5. Moon: 3,476 km
6. Europa: 3,138 km
7. Triton: 2,706 km
8. Titania: 1,580 km
9. Rhea: 1,528 km
10. Oberon: 1,523 km
11. Iapetus: 1,460 km
12. Charon: 1,207 km

Note : The diameters of the various planets and dwarf planets are the mean and approximate values based on various sources.

[edit] Table

Planets & Dwarf Planets (in order of distance from the Sun)	Image	4,880=1 (Mercury)	12,105=1 (Venus)	12,756=1 (Earth)	6,797=1 (Mars)	933=1 (Ceres)	143,884=1 (Jupiter)	120,514=1 (Saturn)	51,118=1 (Uranus)	49,557=1 (Neptune)	2,300=1 (Pluto)	2,400=1 (Eris)
Mercury		1	2.4805	2.6139	1.3928	0.1911	29.4844	24.6954	10.475	10.1551	0.4713	0.4918
Venus		0.4031	1	1.0537	0.5615	0.07707	11.8863	9.9557	4.2228	4.0939	0.1900	0.19826
Earth		0.38256	0.94896	1	0.5328	0.07314	11.27971	9.4476	4.0073	3.8849	0.180307	0.18814
Mars		0.7179	1.7809	1.87671	1	0.13726	21.1687	17.7304	7.5206	7.29101	0.3383	0.35309
Ceres		5.2304	12.9742	13.6720	7.28510	1	154.2165	129.1682	54.7888	53.115	2.4651	2.5723
Jupiter		0.0339	0.0841	0.0886	0.0472	0.0064	1	0.8375	0.3552	0.3444	0.015	0.0166
Saturn		0.04049	0.1004	0.1058	0.0564	0.0077	1.1939	1	0.4241	0.4112	0.01908	0.0199
Uranus		0.0954	0.2368	0.2495	0.1329	0.01825	2.814	2.3575	1	0.9694	0.0449	0.0469
Neptune		0.0984	0.2442	0.2574	0.13715	0.0188	2.9034	2.4318	1.031	1	0.0464	0.0484
Pluto		2.121	5.263	5.5460	2.9552	0.4056	62.5582	52.3973	22.225	21.5465	1	1.04347
Eris		2.033	5.04375	5.315	2.832	0.38875	59.9516	50.2141	21.299	20.6487	0.9583	1

[edit] Extra Solar Planets

An extrasolar planet, or exoplanet, is a planet beyond the Solar System. As of June 2007, the count of known exoplanets stands at 242.^[2] The vast majority have been detected through various indirect methods rather than actual imaging.^[2] Most of them are giant planets likely to resemble Jupiter more than Earth.

The vast majority of exoplanets found so far have large sizes. All but two of them are more than ten times the size of the Earth. Many are considerably more massive and larger than Jupiter, our own Solar System's largest planet.

Of the 243 extrasolar planets discovered by June 2007, most have masses which are comparable to or larger than Jupiter's. Exceptions include a number of planets discovered orbiting burned-out star remnants called pulsars, such as PSR B1257+12, the planets orbiting the stars Mu Arae, 55 Cancri and GJ 436, which are approximately Neptune-sized, and a planet orbiting Gliese 876 that is estimated to be about 6 to 8 times as massive as the Earth and is probably rocky in composition.

[edit] Scale comparisons

• Venus is often called Earth's twin or its sister planet because the two planets are similar in their respective diameters, structure and bulk composition.
• All four major Jovian moons are larger than the dwarf planets Ceres, Pluto and Eris.
• The Solar System's largest satellites Ganymede and Titan are even larger than the planet Mercury.
• With a diameter of about 3,480 km, the Earth's Moon, is the largest satellite in the inner solar system.
• The Sun contains 99.8 percent of the total mass of the solar system.

[edit] See also

Find more about Solar system on Wikipedia's sister projects:
	Dictionary definitions
	Textbooks
	Quotations
	Source texts
	Images and media
	News stories
	Learning resources

• List of solar system objects by radius
• List of planetary bodies
• Solar System
• Attributes of the largest solar system bodies
• Geological features of the solar system
• Table of planetary attributes

[edit] Reference Sources

• Yoder, Charles F. (1995). in T. J. Ahrens: Global Earth Physics: A Handbook of Physical Constants. Washington: American Geophysical Union. ISBN 0875908519. Retrieved on 2007-03-17. 
• Williams, David R. (September 1, 2004). Earth Fact Sheet. NASA. Retrieved on 2007-03-17.
• Comins, Neil F. (2001). Discovering the Essential Universe, Second Edition, W. H. Freeman. ISBN 0-7167-5804-0. Retrieved on 2007-03-17. 
• Kirk Munsell:Solar System Exploration: Earth. NASA (October 19, 2006). Retrieved on 2007-03-17.

1. ^ Scott S. Sheppard. The Jupiter Satellite Page. University of Hawaii. Retrieved on 2006-07-23.
2. ^ ^{a b} Schneider, Jean (2007-04-25). Interactive Extra-solar Planets Catalog. The Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia. Retrieved on 2007-04-25.

[edit] External links

• www.sciencenetlinks.com
• www.extrasolar.net
• Solar System Profile by NASA's Solar System Exploration
• NASA's Solar System Simulator
• NASA/JPL Solar System main page
• The Nine Planets - Comprehensive Solar System site by Bill Arnett
• SPACE.com: All About the Solar System

[edit] Gallery

Size Comparison between Mercury and Earth	Size Comparison between Venus and Earth	Size Comparison between Earth and Mars	Size Comparison between Earth and Jupiter
Size Comparison between Saturn and Earth	Size Comparison between Earth and Uranus	Size Comparison between Earth and Neptune	Size Comparison between Pluto and Earth
Size Comparison between Earth and the Moon.	Size Comparison between Earth, the Moon, and Ceres.