Astronomy solar system diagrams can help you better understand the way the solar system works. It shows the location of every planet as well as their relative positions in the solar system. This makes it easier for you to picture the positions of all the planets and their moons in relation to each other in space.
The Solar System consists of the Sun, other stellar objects, a handful of extremely large extrasolar planets (planets which orbit very close to the Sun) and a number of small rocky dwarf planets (which orbit farther out in the solar system). The Sun is an incredibly massive object, composed of several rotating and heating gasses, like a planet rotating in an alien wind. Other objects of interest are the dwarf planets and comets. Let’s take a look at the Sun and the various inner planets that orbit around it:
The Sun is a Grownup Planets: The Sun is a very old solar system object. It consists mainly of hydrogen and helium gases, together with a few other elements. The Sun formed in the relatively Near Solar nebula (a cloud of dust and gas that existed around the time of the Big Bang) and is still very much within the Solar System, more than 4 billion years later. The Sun is an extremely large object, so much so that it has enough matter to form all the planets in the solar system, including our own Earth. If you include all the smaller terrestrial planets (the terrestrial satellites orbiting the Sun besides the inner planets) you get a total of ten planets that orbit around the Sun.
The Dwarf Planets: These small icy objects are thought to be leftover bits of primordial material that was captured into the Solar System by relatively small stars during its formation. Although they are too small to actually be classified as planets, many scientists believe they are candidates for planets since they formed close to the Sun. They are similar to the Sun in that they are composed mostly of hydrogen and helium, although they orbit much farther out than the sun. This means that like the Sun, they will eventually burn out and be swallowed up by the Sun.
The Dwarf Planets: These are not actual planets but large icy chunks of rock and ice that are circling the sun. They are too big to be classified as full-fledged stars, but much closer to the Sun (at about one tenth the solar system distance). There are two such dwarf planets in the outer solar system: Halley and Hale-Bopp. Although they are not as big as the Sun, they are the closest objects to the Sun that we know of. They are very similar to our own planets in composition and orbit, and one can draw an idea of their makeup by comparing the position and motion of Halley and Hale-Bopp.
The Magellans: These are objects in our solar system that are half frozen. They are very cold, and they retain a liquid mass (often referred to as the “Methano” which is a form of mercury) in their center. This cool mass has many interesting characteristics including the fact that it contains a high content of iron (not exactly metal, but close), and it is very smooth. It is very similar in composition to the Earth. The major difference is that Methano has a very low density (more like water) and it is very rare in space.
The asteroids: These are small rocky objects that travel around the solar system and come within very close reach of the Earth. Many of them are headed towards the Earth at amazing speeds, some faster than the moon. In fact, some have been recently discovered to take more than one step in one orbit! We know that comets often include at least one asteroid or multiple asteroids. They also often include a rocky nucleus, which can come from a cometary merger, collisions, or from an asteroid that has broken apart.
Nearby planet: One interesting thing about comets is that sometimes they include a nearby planet (also called a “g Neighbor”). The existence of a nearby planet was confirmed by NASA’s New Horizons mission, which went into the discovery in July of 2021. This Nearby planet is quite interesting because it has a large amount of ice (perhaps much more than we think Earth does) and it revolves around once every five years. If you were a guest user on this planet, what could you do? Well, you could send and receive email!