Our Solar System

The solar system is much, MUCH bigger than you think. It spans about 287.46 billion kilometers and contains many interesting objects. Our solar system consists of objects bound by the Sun's gravitational pull in the following order from closest to the sun to farthest - Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Kuiper belt, Oort Cloud. 

We all know the planets (I hope), so I will be discussing the Kuiper belt and the Oort cloud in more detail. The Kuiper belt is a ring of icy bodies outside of Neptune's orbit, of which Pluto is a part of. It consists of many bits of rock and ice, the occasional comet, and fragments of dwarf planets. Almost all Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) are smaller than Pluto. 

Moving onto the hypothesized Oort Cloud: it is the most distant region of our solar system, and is believed to be a giant spherical shell surrounding the solar system. It contains the same type of icy rocks as the Kuiper belt, and it is also thought to be the origin of most comets. It is at the very outer regions of our solar system, with the outer part of the Oort Cloud being about 100,000 astronomical units (AU) away from the Sun (one astronomical unit is the distance of the earth from the Sun).

Damn, that's big.

Fig.1 Models of the solar system

Further reading: https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/solar-system/our-solar-system/in-depth/

What do you think about our solar system? Please leave any feedback in the comments!

Email me at bparth@tisb.ac.in

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