Whois & Analysis for solarsystemscope.com

The Solar System is the gravitationally bound system comprising the Sun and the objects that orbit it, either directly or indirectly.

Of those objects that orbit the Sun directly, the largest eight are the planets, with the remainder being significantly smaller objects, such as dwarf planets and small Solar System bodies.

Of the objects that orbit the Sun indirectly, the moons, two are larger than the smallest planet, Mercury.

The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System.

It is a nearly perfect sphere of hot plasma, with internal convective motion that generates a magnetic field via a dynamo process.

years ago from the gravitational collapse of matter within a region of a large molecular cloud.

Most of this matter gathered in the center, whereas the rest flattened into an orbiting disk that became the Solar System.

The central mass became so hot and dense that it eventually initiated nuclear fusion in its core.

It is thought that almost all stars form by this process.

A dwarf planet is a planetary-mass object that is neither a planet nor a natural satellite.

That is, it is in direct orbit of the Sun, and is massive enough for its gravity to crush it into a hydrostatic equilibrium shape (usually a spheroid), but has not cleared the neighborhood of other material around its orbit.

A comet is an icy small Solar System body that, when passing close to the Sun, warms and begins to evolve gasses, a process called outgassing.

This produces a visible atmosphere or coma, and sometimes also a tail.

These phenomena are due to the effects of solar radiation and the solar wind acting upon the nucleus of the comet.

Comet nuclei range from a few hundred metres to tens of kilometres across and are composed of loose collections of ice, dust, and small rocky particles.

The coma may be up to 15 times the Earth's diameter, while the tail may stretch one astronomical unit.

If sufficiently bright, a comet may be seen from the Earth without the aid of a telescope and may subtend an arc of 30° (60 Moons) across the sky.

Comets have been observed and recorded since ancient times by many cultures.

A constellation is formally defined as a region of the celestial sphere, with boundaries laid down by the International Astronomical Union (IAU).

The constellation areas mostly had their origins in Western-traditional patterns of stars from which the constellations take their names.