SOLAR SYSTEM

The Solar System is full of planets, moons, asteroids, comets, minor planets, and many other exciting objects.

What Is The Solar System?

The Solar System is made up of all the planets that orbit our Sun. In addition to planets, the Solar System also consists of moons, comets, asteroids, minor planets, and dust and gas. Everything in the Solar System orbits or revolves around the Sun. Because its powerful gravity attracts all the other objects in the Solar System towards it.

How Did the Solar System form?

The creation of our Solar System took place billions of years. Scientists believe that the Solar System evolved from a giant cloud of dust and gas. They believe that dust and gas began to collapse under the weight of its own gravity. The matter contained began moving in a giant circle. At the center of this spinning cloud, a small star began to form. This star grew larger as it collected more and more of the dust and gas.

Far away from the center of the star, there were smaller clumps of dust and gas that were also collapsing. The star in the center ignited forming our Sun, while the smaller clumps became the planets, minor planets, moons, comets, and asteroids.

The Asteroid Belt, The Kuiper Belt, And The Oort Cloud

The Asteroid Belt is a band of asteroids between the orbits of the planets Jupiter and Mars. It is made up of thousands of objects too small to be considered planets. Further out, beyond the orbit of the minor planet Pluto, sits another belt known as the Kuiper Belt. Like the Asteroid Belt, the Kuiper Belt is also made up of thousands, possibly even millions of objects too small to be considered planets. These objects are made out of mostly frozen gas with small amounts of dust. They are often called dirty snowballs. However, you probably know them by their other name… comets.

Planets of the solar system

Ever since the discovery of Pluto in 1930, we had the idea about the nine planets of our solar system. That all changed starting in the late 1990s, when astronomers began to argue about whether Pluto was a planet. However, the International Astronomical Union ultimately decided in 2006 to call Pluto a “dwarf planet,” reducing the list of “real planets” in our solar system to eight.