Portal:Solar System

The Solar System Portal

The Sun and planets of the Solar System (distances not to scale)

The Solar System is the gravitationally bound system of the Sun and the objects that orbit it. It was formed 4.6 billion years ago when a dense region of a molecular cloud collapsed, forming the Sun and a protoplanetary disc. The Sun is an ordinary main sequence star that maintains a balanced equilibrium by the fusion of hydrogen into helium at its core, releasing this energy from its outer photosphere.

The largest objects that orbit the Sun are the eight planets. In order from the Sun, they are four terrestrial planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars); two gas giants (Jupiter and Saturn); and two ice giants (Uranus and Neptune). All terrestrial planets have solid surfaces. Inversely, all giant planets do not have a definite surface, as they are mainly composed of gases and liquids. Over 99.86% of the Solar System's mass is in the Sun and nearly 90% of the remaining mass is in Jupiter and Saturn.

There is a strong consensus among astronomers that the Solar System has at least eight dwarf planets: Ceres, Pluto, Haumea, Quaoar, Makemake, Gonggong, Eris, and Sedna. There are a vast number of small Solar System bodies, such as asteroids, comets, centaurs, meteoroids, and interplanetary dust clouds. Some of these bodies are in the asteroid belt (between Mars's and Jupiter's orbit) and the Kuiper belt (just outside Neptune's orbit). Six planets, six dwarf planets, and other bodies have orbiting natural satellites, which are commonly called 'moons'.

The Solar System is constantly flooded by the Sun's charged particles, the solar wind, forming the heliosphere. Around 75–90 astronomical units, the solar wind is halted, resulting in the heliopause. This is the boundary of the Solar System to interstellar space. The outermost region of the Solar System is the theorized Oort cloud, the source for long-period comets, extending 2,000–200,000 astronomical units (0.032–3.2 light-years). The closest star to the Solar System, Proxima Centauri, is 4.25 light-years away. Both stars belong to the Milky Way galaxy. (Full article...)

Selected article –

Comet P/Halley as taken March 8, 1986, by W. Liller

Halley's Comet is the best-known of the short-period comets, and is visible from Earth every 75 to 76 years. Halley is the only short-period comet that is clearly visible to the naked eye, and thus, the only naked-eye comet that might appear twice in a human lifetime. Other naked-eye comets may be brighter and more spectacular, but will appear only once in thousands of years. Halley's returns to the inner Solar System have been observed by astronomers since at least 240 BC, and recorded by Chinese, Babylonian, and mediaeval European chroniclers, but were not recognised as reappearances of the same object. The comet's periodicity was first determined in 1705 by English astronomer Edmond Halley, after whom it is now named. It last appeared in the inner Solar System in 1986 and will next appear in mid-2061. During its 1986 apparition, Halley's Comet became the first to be observed in detail by spacecraft, providing the first observational data on the structure of the comet nucleus and the mechanism of coma and tail formation. These observations supported a number of longstanding hypotheses about comet construction, particularly Fred Whipple's "dirty snowball" model, which correctly surmised that Halley would be composed of a mixture of volatile ices, such as water, carbon dioxide and ammonia, and dust. However, the missions also provided data which substantially reformed and reconfigured these ideas. (Full article...)

More selected articles

Selected picture

• 
  Planum Boreum

  Photo credit: Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

  False-color Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter image of a side of the Chasma Boreale, a canyon in the polar ice cap of the Planum Boreum (north pole of Mars). Light browns are layers of surface dust, greys and blues are layers of water and carbon dioxide ice. Regular geometric cracking is indicative of higher concentrations of water ice.
  
  The Planum Boreum's permanent ice cap has a maximum depth of 3 km (1.9 mi). It is roughly 1200 km (750 mi) in diameter, an area equivalent to about 1½ times the size of Texas. The Chasma Boreale is up to 100 km (62.5 mi) wide and features scarps up to 2 km (1.25 mi) high. For a comparison, the Grand Canyon is approximately 1.6 km (1 mi) deep in some places and 446 km (279 mi) long but only up to 24 km (15 mi) wide.
• 

  

  Sunspot TRACE image

  Sunspot

  Credit: NASA/TRACE

  A TRACE image of sunspots on the surface, or photosphere, of the Sun from September 2002, is taken in the far ultraviolet on a relatively quiet day for solar activity. However, the image still shows a large sunspot group visible as a bright area near the horizon. Although sunspots are relatively cool regions on the surface of the Sun, the bright glowing gas flowing around the sunspots have a temperature of over one million °C (1.8 million °F). The high temperatures are thought to be related to the rapidly changing magnetic field loops that channel solar plasma.
• 
  Jupiter

  Image credit: NASA

  An animated view of Voyager I's approach to Jupiter. One frame of this image was taken each Jupiter day (approximately 10 hours) between January 6 and February 9, 1979, as the space probe flew from 58 million to 31 million kilometers from Jupiter during that time. The small, round, dark spots appearing in some frames are the shadows cast by the moons passing between Jupiter and the Sun, while the small, white flashes around the planet, are the moons themselves.
• 

  

  Solar eclipse of 11 August 1999

  Solar eclipse of 1999 August 11

  Credit: Luc Viatour

  The solar eclipse of 1999 August 11, as seen from France. This was the most viewed total eclipse in human history, although some areas offered impaired visibility due to adverse weather conditions. The path of the Moon's shadow began in the Atlantic Ocean, before traversing Cornwall, northern France, southern Germany, Austria, Hungary and northern Serbia. Its maximum was in Romania, and it continued across the Black Sea, Turkey, Iran, southern Pakistan and India.
• 
  Mars

  Photograph credit: European Space Agency

  Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and is known as the "Red Planet" due to its reddish appearance as seen from Earth. The planet is named after Mars, the Roman god of war. A terrestrial planet, Mars has a thin atmosphere and surface features reminiscent both of the impact craters of the Moon and the volcanoes, valleys, deserts and polar ice caps of the Earth. The planet has the highest mountain in the Solar System, Olympus Mons, as well as the largest canyon, Valles Marineris. Mars's rotation period and seasonal cycles are also similar to those of the Earth. Of all the planets in the Solar System other than Earth, Mars is the most likely to harbour liquid water and perhaps life. There are ongoing investigations assessing Mars's past potential for habitability, as well as the possibility of extant life. Future astrobiology missions are planned, including NASA's Mars 2020 rover and the European Space Agency (ESA)'s Rosalind Franklin rover. In November 2016, NASA reported finding a large amount of underground ice in the Utopia Planitia region of the planet. The volume of water detected has been estimated to be equivalent to the volume of water in Lake Superior. Mars has two moons, Phobos and Deimos, which are small and irregularly shaped.
  
  This picture is a true-colour image of Mars, taken from a distance of about 240,000 kilometres (150,000 mi) by the OSIRIS instrument on ESA's Rosetta spacecraft, during its February 2007 flyby of the planet. The image was generated using OSIRIS's orange (red), green and blue filters.
• 
  Olympus Mons

  Image credit: United States Geological Survey

  A composite image of Olympus Mons on Mars, the tallest known volcano and mountain in the Solar System. This image was created from black-and-white imagery from the USGS's Mars Global Digital Image Mosaic and color imagery acquired from the 1978 visit of Viking 1.
• 

  

  Comet Hale-Bopp 29-03-1997

  Comet Hale–Bopp

  Credit: Philipp Salzgeber

  Comet Hale–Bopp sails across the sky in the vicinity of Pazin in Istria, Croatia. To the lower right of the comet the Andromeda Galaxy is also faintly visible. The comet was visible to the naked eye for a record 18 months, twice as long as the Great Comet of 1811. At perihelion, it shone brighter than any star in the sky except Sirius, and its two tails stretched 30-40 degrees across the sky. The passage of Hale-Bopp was notable also for inciting a degree of panic about comets not seen for decades. Rumours that the comet was being followed by an alien spacecraft inspired a mass suicide among followers of the Heaven's Gate cult.
• 

  

  Mars

  Mars

  Credit: NASA

  Mars, the fourth planet from the Sun, is named after the Roman god of war because of its blood red color. Mars has two small, oddly-shaped moons, Phobos and Deimos, named after the sons of the Greek god Ares. At some point in the future Phobos will be broken up by gravitational forces. The atmosphere on Mars is 95% carbon dioxide. In 2003 methane was also discovered in the atmosphere. Since methane is an unstable gas, this indicates that there must be (or have been within the last few hundred years) a source of the gas on the planet.
• 
  Cassini–Huygens

  Photograph credit: NASA / JPL / Space Science Institute

  The Cassini–Huygens space-research project involved a collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Italian Space Agency to send a probe to study the planet Saturn and its system, including its rings and its natural satellites.
  
  This natural-color mosaic image, combining thirty photographs, was taken by the Cassini orbiter over the course of approximately two hours on 23 July 2008 as it panned its wide-angle camera across Saturn and its ring system as the planet approached equinox. Six moons are pictured in the panorama, with the largest, Titan, visible at the bottom left.
• 
  Lunar distance

  Model: Nickshanks

  Lunar distance is a measurement of the distance from the Earth to the Moon. This diagram shows the distance, averaging 384,400 km (238,900 mi), to scale, as well as the Earth and the Moon (scroll to see the entire image).
• 
  Retrograde and direct motion

  Image credit: Seav

  An animated image showing the apparent retrograde motion of Mars in 2003 as seen from Earth. All the true planets appear to periodically switch direction as they cross the sky. Because Earth completes its orbit in a shorter period of time than the planets outside its orbit, we periodically overtake them, like a faster car on a multi-lane highway. When this occurs, the planet will first appear to stop its eastward drift, and then drift back toward the west. Then, as Earth swings past the planet in its orbit, it appears to resume its normal motion west to east.
• 
  C/2011 W3 (Lovejoy)

  Photograph: NASA/Dan Burbank

  Comet Lovejoy is a long-period comet and Kreutz Sungrazer which was discovered in 2011. Named after its discoverer, Terry Lovejoy, the comet was nicknamed "The Great Christmas Comet" owing to it becoming visible near Christmas.
• 
  The Blue Marble

  Photo credit: The Apollo 17 crew

  The Blue Marble is a famous photograph of Earth. NASA officially credits the image to the entire Apollo 17 crew — Eugene Cernan, Ronald Evans and Jack Schmitt — all of whom took photographic images during the mission. Apollo 17 passed over Africa during daylight hours and Antarctica is also illuminated. The photograph was taken approximately five hours after the spacecraft's launch, while en route to the Moon. Apollo 17, notably, was the last manned lunar mission; no humans since have been at a range where taking a "whole-Earth" photograph such as "The Blue Marble" would be possible.
• 
  Moon

  Photograph credit: Gregory H. Revera

  The Moon is the only natural satellite of Earth and the fifth largest moon in the Solar System. Owing to its synchronous rotation around Earth, the Moon always shows essentially the same face: its near side, which is marked by dark volcanic maria, as well as the bright ancient crustal highlands and the prominent impact craters. However, variations in the Moon's orbital speed due to its orbital eccentricity cause a libration of several degrees of longitude; the alignment of the Moon's orbital plane causes a similar libration in latitude. The Moon was first reached in September 1959 by the Soviet Union's unmanned Luna 2, followed by the first successful soft landing by Luna 9 in 1966. The United States Apollo program achieved the only manned lunar missions to date, including Apollo 8 in 1968, the first manned orbital mission, as well as Apollo 11, the first of six manned landings between 1969 and 1972.
  
  This picture shows the near side of the Moon close to its greatest northern ecliptic latitude, so the southern craters are especially prominent. Tranquility Base, Apollo 11's landing site, is located near the mid-right in the photograph.
• 
  Lakes of methane on Titan

  Image credit: Cassini orbiter

  This false-color radar image taken by the Cassini orbiter provides convincing evidence for large bodies of liquid methane on Titan. Images taken during a fly-by of the moon on July 22, 2006 show more than 75 large bodies of liquid ranging in diameter from three to 70km (1.9 to 43.6 mi) in the moon's northern hemisphere. Intensity in this colorized image is proportional to how much radar brightness is returned. The lakes, darker than the surrounding terrain, are emphasized here by tinting regions of low backscatter in blue. Radar-brighter regions are shown in tan. Smallest details in this image are about 500 m (1,640 ft) across. On January 3, 2007, NASA announced that scientists have "definitive evidence of lakes filled with methane on Saturn's moon Titan."
• 
  Phobos (moon)

  Photo credit: Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

  Phobos, the larger and closer of the two moons of Mars, as seen from about 6,000 kilometres (3,700 mi) away. A small, irregularly shaped object, Phobos orbits about 9,377 km (5,827 mi) from the center of Mars, closer to its primary than any other planetary moon. The illuminated part of Phobos seen in the images is about 21 km (13 mi) across. The most prominent feature in the images is the large crater Stickney in the lower right. With a diameter of 9 km (5.6 mi), it is the largest feature on Phobos.
• 
  Iapetus

  Photo credit: Cassini orbiter

  False-color mosaic shows the entire hemisphere of Iapetus (1,468 km or 912 mi across) visible from the Cassini orbiter on the outbound leg of its encounter with the two-toned moon of Saturn in September 2007. The central longitude of the trailing hemisphere is 24 degrees to the left of the image's center. It is hypothesized that the moon's two-toned nature is due to the sublimation of various ices evaporated from the warmer parts of the surface.
• 

  

  Five global views of Venus by Magellan.

  Magellan (spacecraft)

  Credit: NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory

  These images are composites of the complete radar image collection obtained by the Magellan mission. The Magellan spacecraft was launched aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis in May 1989 and began mapping the surface of Venus in September 1990. The spacecraft continued to orbit Venus for four years, returning high-resolution images, altimetry, thermal emissions and gravity maps of 98 percent of the surface. Magellan spacecraft operations ended on October 12, 1994, when the radio contact was lost with the spacecraft during its controlled descent into the deeper portions of the Venusian atmosphere.
• 

  

  Jupiter

  Jupiter

  Credit: Cassini probe

  Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and by far the largest within the Solar System. It is 318 times more massive than Earth, with a diameter 11 times that of Earth, and with a volume 1300 times that of Earth. Its best known feature is the Great Red Spot, a storm larger than Earth, which was first observed by Galileo four centuries ago. This picture, taken by the Cassini orbiter was one of 26 thousand images taken of Jupiter during the course of its flyby and is the most detailed global color portrait of the planet ever produced.
• 

  

  Earthrise, as seen by Apollo 8

  Apollo 8

  Credit: William Anders

  Earthrise, the first occasion in which humans saw the Earth seemingly rising above the surface of the Moon, taken during the Apollo 8 mission on December 24, 1968. This view was seen by the crew at the beginning of its fourth orbit around the Moon, although the first photograph taken was in black-and-white. Note that the Earth is in shadow here. A photo of a fully lit Earth would not be taken until the Apollo 17 mission.
• 
  Lunar rover

  Photo credit: Harrison Schmitt

  Astronaut Eugene Cernan makes a short test drive of the lunar rover (officially, Lunar Roving Vehicle or LRV) during the early part of the first Apollo 17 extravehicular activity. The LRV was only used in the last three Apollo missions, but it performed without any major problems and allowed the astronauts to cover far more ground than in previous missions. All three LRVs were abandoned on the Moon.
• 
  Europa (moon)

  Photo credit: NASA/JPL

  Realistic-color mosaic of images of Jupiter's moon Europa taken by NASA's Jupiter orbiter Galileo in 1995 and 1998. This view of the moon's anti-Jovian hemisphere shows numerous lineae, linear features created via a tectonic process in which crustal plates of water ice floating on a subsurface ocean (kept warm by tidal flexing) shift in relative position. Reddish regions are areas where the ice has a higher mineral content. The north polar region is at right. (Geologic features are annotated in Commons.)
• 
  Geology of Venus

  Image credit: NASA

  A radar image of the surface of Venus, centered at 180 degrees east longitude. This composite image was created from mapping by the Magellan probe, supplemented by data gathered by the Pioneer orbiter, with simulated hues based on color images recorded by Venera 13 and 14. No probe has been able to survive more than a few hours on Venus's surface, which is completely obscured by clouds, because the atmospheric pressure is some 90 times that of the Earth's, and its surface temperature is around 450 °C (842 °F).

General images

The following are images from various Solar System-related articles on Wikipedia.

• 
  Artist's conception of a protoplanetary disk (from Formation and evolution of the Solar System)
• 
  Diagram of the early Solar System's protoplanetary disk, out of which Earth and other Solar System bodies formed (from Solar System)
• 
  Pierre-Simon Laplace, one of the originators of the nebular hypothesis (from Formation and evolution of the Solar System)
• 
  The four terrestrial planets Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars (from Solar System)
• 
  Diagram of the Milky Way, with galactic features and the relative position of the Solar System labelled. (from Solar System)
• 
  Animations of the Solar System's outer planets orbiting. This animation is 100 times faster than the inner planet animation. (from Solar System)
• 
  Diagram of the Local Interstellar Cloud, the G-Cloud and surrounding stars. As of 2022, the precise location of the Solar System in the clouds is an open question in astronomy. (from Solar System)
• 
  Relative size of the Sun as it is now (inset) compared to its estimated future size as a red giant (from Formation and evolution of the Solar System)
• 
  The orbital eccentricities and inclinations of the scattered disc population compared to the classical and resonant Kuiper belt objects (from Solar System)
• 
  The planets, zodiacal light and meteor shower (top left of image) (from Solar System)
• 
  Orbit classification of Kuiper belt objects. Some clusters that is subjected to orbital resonance are marked. (from Solar System)
• 
  Diagram of the Sun's magnetosphere and helioshealth (from Solar System)
• 
  Neptune and its moon Triton, taken by Voyager 2. Triton's orbit will eventually take it within Neptune's Roche limit, tearing it apart and possibly forming a new ring system. (from Formation and evolution of the Solar System)
• 
  The motion of 'lights' moving across the sky is the basis of the classical definition of planets: wandering stars. (from Solar System)
• 
  Montage of the largest bodies in the Solar System. The asteroid belt and Kuiper belt are not added because the individual asteroids are too small to be shown.
• 
  The Ring nebula, a planetary nebula similar to what the Sun will become (from Formation and evolution of the Solar System)
• 
  To-scale diagram of distance between planets, with the white bar showing orbital variations. The size of the planets is not to scale. (from Solar System)
• 
  The outer planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, compared to the inner planets Earth, Venus, Mars, and Mercury at the bottom right (from Solar System)
• 
  The Solar System within the interstellar medium, with the different regions and their distances on a steped horizontal distance scale (from Solar System)
• 
  Location of the Solar System within the Milky Way (from Formation and evolution of the Solar System)
• 
  The orbits of Sedna, 2012 VP113, Leleākūhonua, and other very distant objects along with the predicted orbit of the hypothetical Planet Nine (from Solar System)
• 
  Overview of the inner Solar System up to Jupiter's orbit (from Solar System)
• 
  Simulation showing outer planets and Kuiper belt:
  a) Before Jupiter/Saturn 2:1 resonance
  b) Scattering of Kuiper belt objects into the Solar System after the orbital shift of Neptune
  c) After ejection of Kuiper belt bodies by Jupiter
  

    Orbit of Jupiter

    Orbit of Saturn

    Orbit of Uranus

    Orbit of Neptune

  (from Formation and evolution of the Solar System)
• 
  True-scale Solar System diagram made by Emanuel Bowen in 1747. At that time, Uranus, Neptune, nor the asteroid belts have been discovered yet. (from Solar System)
• 
  The four largest asteroids: Ceres, Vesta, Pallas, Hygiea. Only Ceres and Vesta have been visited by a spacecraft and thus have a detailed picture. (from Solar System)
• 
  The Sun in true white color (from Solar System)
• 
  Meteor Crater in Arizona. Created 50,000 years ago by an impactor about 50 metres (160 ft) across, it shows that the accretion of the Solar System is not over. (from Formation and evolution of the Solar System)
• 
  Hubble image of protoplanetary discs in the Orion Nebula, a light-years-wide stellar nursery probably very similar to the primordial nebula from which the Sun formed (from Formation and evolution of the Solar System)
• 
  Comparison between the habitable zones of the Solar System and Gliese 581 (planet d was later found to not exist). The habitable zone is highly dependent on parent star's luminosity. (from Solar System)
• 
  Comet Hale–Bopp seen in 1997 (from Solar System)
• 
  Plot of objects around the Kuiper belt and other asteroid populations. J, S, U and N denotes Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. (from Solar System)
• 
  An example of a Hohmann transfer orbit between Earth and Mars as used by the InSight probe:
    InSight ·   Earth ·   Mars (from Solar System)
• 
  Animations of the Solar System's inner planets orbiting. Each frame represents 2 days of motion. (from Solar System)
• 
  The current Sun compared to its peak size in the red-giant phase (from Solar System)
• 
  Artist's conception of the giant impact thought to have formed the Moon (from Formation and evolution of the Solar System)

Did you know –

• ...that Yogi Rock (pictured) is a rock found on Mars by the Mars Pathfinder mission that looks surprisingly like Yogi Bear's head?

• ...that the Kuiper crater in the Kuiper quadrangle, named after Dutch American astronomer Gerard Kuiper, has the highest albedo recorded on Mercury?

• ...that 6Q0B44E, a recently discovered satellite of Earth, is thought to be a large piece of space debris?

• ...that 17th century philosopher Cesare Cremonini refused to look at the Moon's mountains through Galileo's telescope, because Aristotle had proved the Moon was a perfect sphere?

• ...that the south pole of the planet Mercury is located in the Bach quadrangle?

• ...that the Sweden Solar System is currently the world's largest scale model of the Solar System?

• ...that the dominant feature in the Shakespeare quadrangle is the 1300 km wide Caloris Planitia, the largest and best preserved impact basin on Mercury observed by the spacecraft Mariner 10?

• ...that the nearly circular shape of Lukanga Swamp, a wetland covering 2,600 km² in Central Province, Zambia, has led to speculation that it may be a crater formed by the impact of a meteorite?

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Wikinews Space portal

• April 7: NASA's helicopter Ingenuity survives its first night at Mars
• December 25: 'Earth-based life can survive in hydrogen-rich atmospheres': MIT professor Dr Seager tells Wikinews about her research on organisms thriving in oxygen-less environment
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• October 12: Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov dies at age 85
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• September 14: Astronomers find water vapour in atmosphere of exoplanet K2-18b
• March 5: SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule docks with International Space Station
• January 9: Simple animals could live in Martian brines: Wikinews interviews planetary scientist Vlada Stamenković
• November 29: NASA's InSight Lander makes it to Mars
• October 12: Manned Soyuz space mission aborts during launch

Major topics

Solar System: Planets (Definition · Planetary habitability · Terrestrial planets · Gas giants · Rings) · Dwarf planets (Plutoid) · Colonization · Discovery timelineˑ Exploration · Moons · Planetariums

Sun: Sunspot · Solar wind · Solar flare · Solar eclipse

Mercury: Geology · Exploration (Mariner 10 · MESSENGER · BepiColombo) · Transit

Venus: Geology · Atmosphere · Exploration (Venera · Mariner program 2/5/10 · Pioneer · Vega 1/2ˑ Magellan · Venus Express) · Transit

Earth: History · Geology · Geography · Atmosphere · Rotation

Moon: Geology · Selenography · Atmosphere · Exploration (Luna · Apollo 8/11) · Orbit · Lunar eclipse

Mars: Moons (Phobos · Deimos) · Geology · Geography · Atmosphere · Exploration (Mariner · Mars · Viking 1/2 · Pathfinder · MER)

Ceres: Exploration (Dawn)

Jupiter: Moons (Amalthea, Io · Europa · Ganymede · Callisto) · Rings · Atmosphere · Magnetosphere · Exploration (Pioneer 10/11 · Voyager 1/2 · Ulysses · Cassini · Galileo · New Horizons)

Saturn: Moons (Mimas · Enceladus · Tethys · Dione · Rhea · Titan · Iapetus) · Rings · Exploration (Pioneer 11 · Voyager 1/2 · Cassini–Huygens)

Uranus: Moons (Miranda · Ariel · Umbriel · Titania · Oberon) · Rings · Exploration (Voyager 2)

Neptune: Moons (Triton) · Rings · Exploration (Voyager 2)

Planets beyond Neptune

Pluto: Moons (Charon, Nix, Hydra, Kerberos, Styx) · Exploration (New Horizons)

Haumea: Moons (Hi'iaka, Namaka)

Makemake

Eris: Dysnomia

Small bodies: Meteoroids · Asteroids (Asteroid belt) · Centaurs · TNOs (Kuiper belt · Scattered disc · Oort cloud) · Comets (Hale–Bopp · Halley's · Hyakutake · Shoemaker–Levy 9)

Formation and evolution of the Solar System: History of Solar System formation and evolution hypotheses · Nebular hypothesis

See also: Featured content · Featured topic · Good articles · List of objects

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Italicized articles are on dwarf planets or major moons.

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The planet Saturn, see here eclipsing the sun

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