Our Sun is a 4.5 billion-year-old yellow dwarf star – a hot glowing ball of hydrogen and helium – at the center of our solar system. It’s about 93 million miles (150 million kilometers) from Earth and it’s our solar system’s only star. Without the Sun’s energy, life as we know it could not exist on our home planet.
Read more ...Mercury is the smallest planet in our solar system and nearest to the Sun. It's only slightly larger than Earth's Moon. From the surface of Mercury, the Sun would appear more than three times as large as it does when viewed from Earth, and the sunlight would be as much as seven times brighter.
Read more ...Venus is the second planet from the Sun, and our closest planetary neighbor. It's the hottest planet in our solar system, and is sometimes called Earth's twin.
Read more ...Earth – our home planet – is the third planet from the Sun, and the fifth largest planet. It's the only place we know of inhabited by living things.
Read more ...Mars – the fourth planet from the Sun – is a dusty, cold, desert world with a very thin atmosphere. This dynamic planet has seasons, polar ice caps, extinct volcanoes, canyons and weather.
Read more ...Jupiter is a world of extremes. It's the largest planet in our solar system – if it were a hollow shell, 1,000 Earths could fit inside. It's also the oldest planet, forming from the dust and gases left over from the Sun's formation 4.6 billion years ago. But it has the shortest day in the solar system, taking about 9.9 hours to spin around once on its axis.
Read more ...Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun, and the second-largest planet in our solar system.
Read more ...Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun, and it has the third largest diameter of planets in our solar system. Uranus appears to spin sideways.
Read more ...Neptune is the eighth and most distant planet in our solar system.
Read more ...Pluto was once our solar system's ninth planet, but has been reclassified as a dwarf planet. It's located in the Kuiper Belt.
Read more ...