How Big are the Planets and other Stuff in Our Solar System?

by | Apr 26, 2019

solar-system-lrg-9218976
Our Solar System (Not Anywhere Close to Scale)

Our solar system consists of

  • One yellow dwarf star (the sun)
  • Eight Planets
  • Five Dwarf Planets
  • 181 moons (Mars has 2, Jupiter 79, Saturn 53, Uranus 27, Neptune 14)
  • Over 550,000 asteroids
  • Over 3,000 comets

Here is a really cool picture showing the relative sizes of the top 88 objects in the solor system by size. (Scroll right after you click on it.)

The Sun makes up 99.85% of all mass in the Solar System. The planets make up 0.135% and all the moons, comets, asteroids, and meteoroids constitute the remaining 0.015%. Here’s how the mass breaks out in a series of pretty informative pie charts:

Chart One: Relative masses of the bodies of the Solar System. Objects smaller than Saturn are not visible at this scale.

1024px-sun_vs_planets_en-svg_-4150846

Chart Two: Relative masses of the Solar planets. Jupiter at 71% of the total and Saturn at 21% dominate the system. Mercury is not visible at this scale.

1024px-masses_of_the_planets_en-svg_-7675842

Chart Three: Relative masses of the solid bodies of the Solar System. Earth at 48% and Venus at 39% dominate. Bodies less massive than Pluto are not visible at this scale.

1024px-masses_of_solid_solar_system_bodies_en-svg_-4901847

Chart Four: Relative masses of the rounded moons of the Solar System.

masses_of_all_moons_in_the_solar_system-3686618

Source for pie charts here.

2 Comments

  1. That was fantastic

    Reply

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