Which is nearest planet to the sun?

The solar system in which we live is home to eight planets including Earth. The number was reduced from nine when Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006. The distance of each planet from the sun is a determinant of its basic composition. Mars and the planets inside its orbit are known as terrestrial planets because they are composed mostly of rock. The ones outside its orbits are known as gas giants or, in the case of the two outermost planets, ice giants. The outer planets may have rocky cores, but if so, the cores are deeply embedded in the mixture of gas and ice that forms their bulk. One reason for Pluto's reclassification is that, orbiting beyond Neptune and yet being mostly rock, it doesn't conform to this pattern. Mercury, named after a Roman god, is 36 million miles away from the sun and 48 million miles from Earth. It is the smallest planet in the solar system, with a diameter of 3,031 miles. It takes 87.96 Earth days for Mercury to revolve around the sun, faster than any other planet, and 58.7 Earth days to rotate on its axis. Mercury's surface is marked by smooth plains and deep craters, and the planet is made mostly of rock and metal. Venus Venus, named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty, is 67.2 million miles from the sun and 26 million miles away from Earth. It is the sixth largest planet in the solar system with a diameter of 7,521 miles. It takes 224.68 Earth days for Venus to revolve around the sun and 243 Earth days to rotate on its axis...

The fastest asteroid in the Solar System has been discovered at NOIRLab’s CTIO using the powerful ... [+] 570-megapixel Dark Energy Camera (DECam) in Chile — the Sun’s new nearest neighbor. Astronomers just ten days ago discovered an asteroid with the fastest orbital period of any known asteroid in the Solar System. The orbit of the approximately 1-kilometer-diameter asteroid takes it as close as 20 million kilometers (12 million miles or 0.13 au), from the Sun every 113 days. This artist’s rendering shows the asteroid (above) and the planet Mercury (below). CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/J. da Silv The Sun’s new nearest neighbor has been revealed. The fastest orbital period asteroid in the Solar System has been discovered at NOIRLab’s CTIO using ... [+] the powerful 570-megapixel Dark Energy Camera (DECam) in Chile — the Sun’s new nearest neighbor. The illustration shows the locations of the planets and asteroid on the discovery night of 13 August 2021, as they would be seen from a vantage point above the Solar System (north). CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/J. da Silv 2021 PH27 has actually just gone behind the Sun and won’t be visible again until early in 2022. More observations are planned for then to determine its precise orbit, which will allow it to be officially named. U.S. Open Golf Odds, Expert Picks, Featured Groups And 2023 Top Player Profiles The discovery of 2021 PH27 is significant because it will help astronomers figure out what asteroids could one day impact Earth. “Understa...

The eight planets in our Solar System are ordered from the closest to the Sun to the furthest away. The four planets closest to the Sun are Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars. Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun at an average distance of 35. 98 million miles (57. 91 million kilometers). Venus is next at 67. 24 million miles (108. 2 million kilometers) away, followed by Earth at 92. 96 million miles (149. 6 million kilometers) away, and Mars at 141. 6 million miles (227. 9 million kilometers). These four planets are referred to as the terrestrial or inner planets as they are all made of rock and have solid surfaces. Beyond Mars is the asteroid belt which separates the terrestrial planets from the four outer gas giants of the Solar System – Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. What are the 3 closest planets to the Sun? The three closest planets to the Sun are Mercury, Venus, and Earth. Mercury is the closest planet to the sun, about 36 million miles away, and it is the smallest planet in our Solar System. Venus is the second closest planet to the Sun, about 67 million miles away and it is the brightest planet in the night sky. Earth is the third closest planet to the Sun, about 93 million miles away, and it is the only planet in our Solar System known to have life on it. Why is Pluto no longer a planet? The International Astronomical Union (IAU) officially declared Pluto as no longer a planet in 2006. This came after years of debate over the definition of a planet in our ...

Saturn orbits the Sun at a mean distance of 1,427,000,000 km (887 million miles). Its closest distance to Earth is about 1.2 billion km (746 million miles), and its phase angle—the angle that it makes with the Sun and Earth—never exceeds about 6°. Saturn, seen from the vicinity of Earth, thus always appears nearly fully illuminated. 27 True-or-False Questions from Britannica’s Most Difficult Science Quizzes Basic astronomical data Saturn orbits the Sun at a mean distance of 1,427,000,000 km (887 million miles). Its closest distance to Earth is about 1.2 billion km (746 million miles), and its Like Jupiter and most of the other planets, Saturn has a regular Planetary data for Saturn *Time required for the planet to return to the same position in the sky relative to the Sun as seen from Earth. **Calculated for the altitude at which 1 bar of atmospheric pressure is exerted. mean distance from Sun 1,426,666,000 km (9.5 AU) eccentricity of orbit 0.054 inclination of orbit to ecliptic 2.49° Saturnian year (sidereal period of revolution) 29.45 Earth years visual magnitude at mean opposition 0.7 mean synodic period* 378.10 Earth days mean orbital velocity 9.6 km/sec equatorial radius** 60,268 km polar radius** 54,364 km mass 5.683 × 10 26 kg mean density 0.69 g/cm 3 equatorial gravity** 896 cm/sec 2 polar gravity** 1,214 cm/sec 2 equatorial escape velocity** 35.5 km/sec polar escape velocity** 37.4 km/sec rotation period (magnetic field) 10 hr 39 min 24 sec (Voyager era); about 10...

The largest of all of the planets in the solar system, Jupiter shines brightly in the sky despite its distance. Venus is the only planet constantly brighter than the gas giant, though at times Mars will give it a run for its money. Part of this has to do with its size and composition, but the planet grows brighter and dimmer depending on its distance from Earth. How far is Jupiter from Earth? Because both planets travel in an elliptical path around the sun, Jupiter takes 11.86 Earth-years to complete one orbit of the sun. As Earth travels around the sun, it catches up with Jupiter once every 398.9 days, causing the gas giant to appear to travel backwards in the night sky. This retrograde motion caused a number of problems to the original, sun-centric (or " When two bodies orbit one another, the system has its own center of mass, which generally lies closer to the more massive object. This is the point around which both bodies rotate. Thus, although we say that planets revolve around the sun, both the sun and the planets actually revolve around the center of mass point. This means that the planets have a center of mass not only with the sun but also with each other; however, the massive sun dominates the center of mass point between, say, Earth and Mercury. In the solar system, the center of mass for most sun-planet systems (sun-Earth, sun-Venus, etc.) lies inside of our enormous star. But because Jupiter is so massive, the center of mass within the sun-Jupiter system actua...

Is Venus Always The Closest Planet? Image of Mercury taken by the Messenger spacecraft. Image credit: NASA Since all the planets have elliptical orbits, the distance between them varies over time. Knowing this, do any other planets move closer to Earth than Venus? While Venus has the closest approach to Earth at 24-million miles (38-million kilometres), it is actually not the closest planet to Earth on average. That title goes to the smallest planet in the solar system: Mercury. Mercury will never approach Earth as close as Venus does, yet the average distance between Earth and Mercury is smaller than the average distance between Venus and Earth. While Venus can and does get quite close to our world, it also spends a lot of time being very far away. Most of the time, Mercury is a little bit closer to Earth than Venus.