SOLAR SYSTEM
All four terrestrial planets belong to the inner Solar System and have solid surfaces. Inversely,
all four giant planets belong to the outer Solar System and do not have a definite surface, as
they are mainly composed of gases and liquids. 99.86% of the Solar System's mass is in the
Sun and nearly 90% of the remaining mass are in Jupiter and Saturn. There is a strong
consensus among astronomers that the Solar System also has eight dwarf planets, which
consist of one asteroid-belt object – Ceres; four Kuiper-belt objects – Pluto, Haumea, Quaoar,
and Makemake; and three scattered-disc objects – Gonggong, Eris, and Sedna.
There are a vast number of smaller objects orbiting the Sun, called small Solar System bodies.
This category includes asteroids, comets, centaurs, meteoroids and interplanetary dust clouds.
Many of these objects are in the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter (1.5–4.5
AU), and the Kuiper belt just outside Neptune's orbit (30–50 AU). Six of the major planets, the
six largest possible dwarf planets, and many of the smaller bodies are orbited by natural
satellites, commonly called "moons" after Earth's Moon. Two natural satellites, Jupiter's moon
Ganymede and Saturn's moon Titan, are larger than Mercury, the smallest terrestrial planet,
though they are less massive.
The Solar System is constantly flooded by the Sun's charged particles, the Solar wind, forming
the heliosphere. Pushed against by the surrounding interstellar medium of the Local Cloud, the
Solar wind starts slowing at 75 to 90 AU (the termination shock), before being halted, resulting
in the heliopause, the boundary of the Solar System to interstellar space. The outermost region
of the Solar System is the Oort cloud, the source for long-period comets, extending from 2,000
AU to the edge of the Solar System's sphere of gravitational influence at up to 200,000 AU (3.2
ly). The closest star to the Solar System, Proxima Centauri, is 4.25 ly away. The Solar System
orbits the Galactic Center of the Milky Way galaxy, as part of its Orion Spur, at a distance of
o26,000 .
