Solar System – Facts and Information about the Planets and Solar System. The solar system is made up of the sun and everything that orbits around it, including planets, moons, asteroids, comets and meteoroids.
It extends from the sun, called Sol by the ancient Romans, and goes past the four inner planets, through the Asteroid Belt to the four gas giants and on to the disk-shaped Kuiper Belt and far beyond to the giant, spherical Oort Cloud and the teardrop-shaped heliopause. Scientists estimate that the edge of the solar system is about 9 billion miles (15 billion kilometers) from the sun. For millennia, astronomers have followed points of light that seemed to move among the stars.
The ancient Greeks named these planets, meaning "wanderers. " Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn were known in antiquity, and the invention of the telescope added the Asteroid Belt, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto and many of these worlds' moons. Home Page. : Planets. National Aeronautics andSpace Administration Solar System ExplorationNASA Science Filters Map Selector:
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