Solar System

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Our solar system is mainly consisting of eight planets, Moons, our Sun and few dwarf planets. These planets are Mercury, Venus, our own planet Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.

 
Solar System with Dwarf planet Pluto (Image Credit: Pixabay.com and NASA/JPL-Caltech)


And also we have Pluto the dwarf planet. Previously Pluto was believed as a planet but after August 2006, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) down graded the status of the Pluto to Dwarf planets. Also there is a asteroid belt in between Mars and the Jupiter. 



In our solar system, the planets are categorized in to two.

  • Inner Planets
  • Outer Planets


Inner Planets are innermost planets in other words planets which are closer to the Sun. And all of them are terrestrial planets.They have rocky and compact surface.Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars are inner planets. These terrestrial planets are quite smaller compared to other gas and icy giants but larger than dwarf planets.

Outer planets are planets which are far away from the Sun. They are gas giants and ice giants in the solar system. Gas giants are Jupiter and Saturn, while Ice giants are Uranus and Neptune. Gas giants are the most largest planets in our solar system. They mainly contains Hydrogen and Helium gasses. Even though they are very big, they don't have a terrestrial hard surface. They just have a swirling gases around a solid core.

These two inner and outer regions divided by the asteroid belt which is situated between Mars and the Jupiter.

There is a another region called Dwarf planet region after the planet Neptune. This also called as Kuiper belt. This contains millions of icy object including Pluto. Some of the objects are comets.

 

 
Kuiper belt, Oort cloud and interstellar Space (Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)


Beyond the Kuiper belt there is a region called Oort cloud. This region also contains millions of comets and icy objects. Oort cloud is the outer most region of the solar system. And that is in the interstellar space. In the above figure you can see the region where Voyager 1 is now traveling at. Voyager 1 travels around million miles per day but to reach to the inner boundary of the Oort cloud it will take up to 300 years.


Voyager 1 traveling through space (Image Credit: Pixabay.com)

Following are some YouTube videos about Solar System. You can find both English and Sinhala versions of the videos below.



 


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