Every object in space exerts a gravitational pull on every other, and so gravity influences the paths taken by everything traveling through space. It is the glue that holds together entire galaxies. It keeps planets in orbit. It can also cause life-destroying asteroids to crash into planets.

The Sun’s gravity pulls the planets in orbit around it, and some planets pull moons in orbit around them. The closer the planet is to the Sun, the greater the pull of the Sun’s gravity, and the faster the planet orbits. This model fails in that objects in stable orbits do not fall into the Sun.

Gravity causes the motions of planets, stars, and galaxies. It’s why the Moon orbits around the Earth, and the Earth orbits around the Sun, and the solar system orbits around the galaxy. It’s all because of gravity. This rotation helped smooth out the surface, and over time planets became more and more spherical.

Approximately 4.6 billion years ago, the solar system was a cloud of dust and gas known as a solar nebula. Gravity collapsed the material in on itself as it began to spin, forming the sun in the center of the nebula. Small particles drew together, bound by the force of gravity, into larger particles.

Our solar system formed about 4.5 billion years ago from a dense cloud of interstellar gas and dust. The cloud collapsed, possibly due to the shockwave of a nearby exploding star, called a supernova. When this dust cloud collapsed, it formed a solar nebula—a spinning, swirling disk of material.

The Sun and the planets formed together, 4.6 billion years ago, from a cloud of gas and dust called the solar nebula. A shock wave from a nearby supernova explosion probably initiated the collapse of the solar nebula. After the Sun ignited, a strong solar wind cleared the system of gas and dust.

Five planets have been known since ancient times — Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. The first new planet discovered was Uranus. It was discovered by the English astronomer Sir William Herschel in 1781….

astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus

The order of the planets in the solar system, starting nearest the sun and working outward is the following: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and then the possible Planet Nine. If you insist on including Pluto, it would come after Neptune on the list.

Answer. The International Astronomical Union (IAU) downgraded the status of Pluto to that of a dwarf planet because it did not meet the three criteria the IAU uses to define a full-sized planet. Essentially Pluto meets all the criteria except one—it “has not cleared its neighboring region of other objects.”

Most agree that Neptune is the coldest planet due to its proximity to the sun. The sun produces most of the heat that helps planets regulate their temperatures. Neptune is so far away from the sun that it does not get enough heat to melt the ice caps that form on the planet.

The average temperature on Neptune is a brutally cold -373 degrees F. Triton, Neptune’s largest satellite, has the coldest temperature measured in our solar system at -391 degrees F. That is only 68 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than absolute zero, a temperature in which all molecular action stops.

Mass of Mars is lesser than that of Earth which means the time passes faster there relative to Earth. Hence, you would age faster on Mars relative to Earth.

It’s Mercury! Of all the planets in the Solar System, Mercury has the smallest orbit. So although it never gets quite as close to the Earth as Venus or Mars, it never gets far away from us also! In fact, Mercury is the closest – for most of the time- planet not only to the Earth, but also to Mars and Venus and…

219,834,224 kilometers

Mercury

Venus

How best we see Venus depends on its position relative to Earth and the Sun. Venus has an albedo of 0.7, which means that it reflects about 70 per cent of the sunlight that falls on it. So, that’s why Venus is shining so brightly at the moment, and it makes for wonderful viewing in the evening sky.

All of the planets, except for Earth, were named after Greek and Roman gods and godesses. The name Earth is an English/German name which simply means the ground. It comes from the Old English words ‘eor(th)e’ and ‘ertha’.

Quasars