What Is the Solar System?

I suppose that everyone knows that the Solar System is that part of our galaxy whose main influence, in terms of gravity, is the Sun. It consists of the Sun, the Planets including the Earth and our Moon and the planets’ moons, the Asteroids and Comets. In addition there are quite a few other things, such as the dwarf planets and their moons, the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud. In most cases, much more information can be found on the World Wide Web (e.g.  Wikipedia ,  National Geographic  or  NASA’s Science News ) or by clicking on a link to one of my (or other) Astronomy pages. This diagram shows objects out from the Sun as far as the nearest star, Alpha Centauri. (Strictly,  Proxima Centauri , a companion of Alpha, is slightly closer.)

Not all objects are shown on the diagram. In many cases other web sites (like Wikipedia and those recommended in my list of  books and web sites on Astronomy and Cosmology ) have perfectly adequate information, so I’ll not repeat it; I’ll try to concentrate on the more esoteric and, to me, more interesting material – maybe things you weren’t aware of. (Or maybe they’re just ‘pretty pictures’.)

The objects that are in the left third of the diagram are most familiar to us. Many of them have their own web pages in this site – click on their names in the slate-grey area.
 Most objects beyond Neptune  are described in a separate page or pages. Theories about the formation of the solar system are  elsewhere  as are some   proposed objects never confirmed .