Description: All objects that are under the gravitational influence of the Sun are members of the Solar System. Apart from the Sun at the center, the Solar System includes the eight planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune), their moons, dwarf planets, asteroids, comets, meteoroids, and other objects in the Kuiper Belt and beyond, as well as artificial satellites and space probes. It is believed that the Solar System extends up to 100,000 astronomical units from the Sun in what is called the Oort Cloud, comprising of billions of icy objects.

Related Terms:

• Asteroid
• Astronomical Unit
• Comet
• Dwarf Planet
• Earth
• Jupiter
• Kuiper Belt
• Mars
• Mercury
• Meteoroid
• Moons
• Neptune
• Saturn
• Sun
• Uranus

Term and definition status: This term and its definition have been approved by a research astronomer and a teacher

The OAE Multilingual Glossary is a project of the IAU Office of Astronomy for Education (OAE) in collaboration with the IAU Office of Astronomy Outreach (OAO). The terms and definitions were chosen, written and reviewed by a collective effort from the OAE, the OAE Centers and Nodes, the OAE National Astronomy Education Coordinators (NAECs) and other volunteers. You can find a full list of credits here. All glossary terms and their definitions are released under a Creative Commons CC BY-4.0 license and should be credited to "IAU OAE".