The Solar System Today

The solar system consists of the sun, its planets and their moons and some other heavenly bodies such as asteroids, comets etc.

The sun is like any other star in the sky. It’s surrounded by 9 planets. A planet is a heavenly body which revolves around the sun in a definite orbit. Every planet has its own moon, there are in total 59 satellites revolving around the planets. The sun is our nearest star. It’s the brightest object in the sky because of the relative nearness to us. The sun is at a distance of 8 light minutes from the earth, i.e. it takes about 8 minutes for light to travel from sun to earth. Having problem with doppler shift equation keep reading my upcoming posts, i will try to help you.


The Sun

The sun is a hot sphere of gas consisting of 74% hydrogen, 25% helium and 1% other elements. The sun’s outer layers, together known as the atmosphere consists of three different zones: the photosphere, the chromospheres and the corona. The corona forms the outermost zone followed by chromospheres and the photosphere. Sun produces energy by fusion and the temperature of the sun is 5800 K.

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Planets of the solar system

Out of the nine planets Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars are small planets and their orbits are close to sun. These planets are called the inner planets or the terrestrial planets. The other five planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto (no longer recognized as a planet) are called the outer planets or the Jovian planets. The orbits of all the planets are in the same plane except for Pluto which is in a different plane. The time taken for completing one revolution around the sun is called the period of revolution and the time to complete one full rotation is called the period of rotation. Planets are not self luminous i.e. they don’t have their own light. They shine only by reflecting the sun’s light.