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Our Earth is just one of several Planets that revolve around our Sun, the primary and central object of our Solar System. Since the entire Solar System, including our Earth, was created about the same time (about 4.6 billion years ago), our understanding of the origin and properties of the Solar System, the Sun, and its other members are important to our understanding of Earth itself. We consider the size of our Earth to be very large, in comparison with most sizes and distances we deal with in our daily lives. However, the size of the Earth is very small compared to the size of the Solar System, which consists of the Sun and its family of planets, of which our Earth is only about average in size.
Sun =
Mercury = Venus = Earth = Mars = Jupiter = Saturn = Uranus = Neptune = Pluto = Earths Moon =
1,392,000 km
4,878 km 12,104 km 12,756 km 6,794 km 142,984 km 120,536 km 51,118 km 49,530 km 2,304 km 3,476 km
Mercury
Venus
Mars
Neptune
Sun =
Mercury = Venus = Earth = Mars = Jupiter = Saturn = Uranus = Neptune = Pluto = Earths Moon =
1,392,000 km
4,878 km 12,104 km 12,756 km 6,794 km 142,984 km 120,536 km 51,118 km 49,530 km 2,304 km 3,476 km
Orbit of the newly discovered object, 2003 UB313, compared to those of Pluto and the giant outer planets. Note, the orbits of Pluto and UB313, in red, are tilted relative to the plane of the inner giant planet orbits.