Top 5 Crazy Facts About the Solar System You Don't Know

Most of us think we know the solar system pretty well. There's Earth and our moon, and Mars and Jupiter and all of that good stuff. We all orbit the Sun and we're the third closest, and we all used to think Pluto is a planet but it's really not. Well, there are still a lot of interesting and crazy facts about our own solar system that you probably don't already know.

5 Crazy Facts about the Solar System You Don't Know

1. The Biggest Object Isn't the Sun: To most people it seems obvious that the sun would be the largest object in our solar system. But that actually isn't the case. The largest object in our solar system is the magnetosphere of Jupiter. Jupiter's magnetosphere is about 30 million kilometers across, as opposed to the sun, which is about 1.5 million kilometers across. That's a magnetosphere that's a million times larger than our own, and its strength is about 20,000 times greater than our own, posing serious threats to both humans and unmanned space vehicles that must travel past.

2. The Oort Cloud of Comets: There is a massive, all-encompassing "cloud" of comets surrounding our solar system. Its diameter is estimated to be about 100,000 AU. An AU, or Astronomical Unit, is equivalent to the distance from the Earth to the Sun, which is our orbiting radius. Neptune, the farthest planet, orbits at about 30 AU. The total mass of all of these comets, potentially trillions of them, is equivalent to the mass of the inner planets themselves.

3. Saturn Has Tens of Thousands of Rings: There are seven main rings of Saturn, classified from A to G. But the main rings each are all composed of tens of thousands of ringlets, which are basically high density areas of particles within the main ring itself. Additionally, Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune all have rings as well.

4. There are At Least 7 Moons and 1 Kuiper Belt Object Bigger than Pluto: Yes, Pluto has been relegated to dwarf planet status and it's easy to see why. Jupiter has four moons larger than Pluto, our own moon is larger than the former planet and both Neptune and Saturn have a moon that's larger than Pluto, which has a 2,270 km diameter. There's also at least 1 Kuiper Belt Object - think large asteroids orbiting the sun - that's larger, with the newly discovered Eris having a diameter of 2400 km. Several others such as Quaoar and Sedna are close in size to Pluto as well.

5. Asteroids vs. Meteors vs. ...: Often times people use terms such as asteroid and meteor interchangeably, but all of the terms have very specific definitions that differentiate one another. An asteroid is a rocky object that orbits the sun in an eccentric path, the vast majority of which reside in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. A comet is an object composed of ice and dust that orbits the sun in a huge elliptical orbit, and develops a tail as it heats up close to the sun. A meteoroid has the same properties of an asteroid, but is taken to be smaller than 100 meters in diameter. A meteor is a shooting star, or that quick streak of light across the sky caused by matter causing friction in the air as it enters the atmosphere. A meteorite is a piece of any interplanetary debris that falls to the ground.

Source: Chaisson and McMillan, Astronomy Today, Sixth Edition. 2008.