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Orbital speed. 720,000 km/h (450,000 mi/h) [10] Orbital period. ~230 million years [10] The Solar System [d] is the gravitationally bound system of the Sun and the objects that orbit it. [11] It was formed 4.6 billion years ago when a dense region of a molecular cloud collapsed, forming the Sun and a protoplanetary disc.
Contents. Formation and evolution of the Solar System. There is evidence that the formation of the Solar System began about 4.6 billion years ago with the gravitational collapse of a small part of a giant molecular cloud. [1] Most of the collapsing mass collected in the center, forming the Sun, while the rest flattened into a protoplanetary ...
The Sun is a G-type main-sequence star that makes up about 99.86% of the mass of the Solar System. It has an absolute magnitude of +4.83, estimated to be brighter than about 85% of the stars in the Milky Way, most of which are red dwarfs. [32] [33] The Sun is a Population I, or heavy-element-rich, [b] star. [34]
Earth is rounded into an ellipsoid with a circumference of about 40,000 km. It is the densest planet in the Solar System. Of the four rocky planets, it is the largest and most massive. Earth is about eight light-minutes away from the Sun and orbits it, taking a year (about 365.25 days) to complete one revolution.
At that time, Uranus, Neptune, nor the asteroid belts have been discovered yet. Discovery and exploration of the Solar System is observation, visitation, and increase in knowledge and understanding of Earth 's "cosmic neighborhood". [1] This includes the Sun, Earth and the Moon, the major planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus ...
The average diameter of the orbit of the Earth relative to the Sun. Encompasses the Sun, Mercury and Venus. Inner Solar System ~6.54 AU 9.78×10 8: 8.99: Encompasses the Sun, the inner planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars) and the asteroid belt. Cited distance is the 2:1 resonance with Jupiter, which marks the outer limit of the asteroid belt.
Ignoring the influence of other Solar System bodies, Earth's orbit, also known as Earth's revolution, is an ellipse with the Earth-Sun barycenter as one focus with a current eccentricity of 0.0167. Since this value is close to zero, the center of the orbit is relatively close to the center of the Sun (relative to the size of the orbit).
Solar System – gravitationally bound system comprising the Sun and the objects that orbit it, either directly or indirectly. Of those objects that orbit the Sun directly, the largest eight are the planets (including Earth), with the remainder being significantly smaller objects, such as dwarf planets and small Solar System bodies.