HowDoWhy

There’s a lot more to our solar system than the planets. I’ll cover some of the less known objects and phenomenon such as the Oort Cloud, Kuiper Belt and other strange stuff in a future post, but when people think solar system, they usually think of the planets in orbit around the Sun. Our solar system boasts 8 planets; four terrestrial and 4 gas giants. Starting closest to the Sun and working out the planets are:

• Mercury - Terrestrial. Average distance from the Sun is 36 million miles
• Venus - Terrestrial. Average distance from the Sun is 67.5 million miles
• Earth - Terrestrial. Average distance from the Sun is 92.75 million miles
• Mars - Terrestrial. Average distance from the Sun is 141.5 million miles
• Jupiter - Gas giant. Average distance from the Sun is 484 million miles
• Saturn - Gas giant. Average distance from the Sun is 889 million miles
• Uranus - Gas giant. Average distance from the Sun is 1.95 billion miles
• Neptune - Gas giant. Average distance from the Sun is 2.79 billion miles

Each of the planets above has been linked to the corresponding statistics page on Windows to the Universe, but the site offers so much more information than just that shown on the stats pages. Pay them a visit and look around! The site is available in English and Spanish.