Planets of the Solar System

Planets of the Solar System: real images of Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, each labelled
Real images. Credits: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington; NASA/JPL-Caltech; NASA (Apollo 17); NASA/JPL/USGS; NASA/JPL/University of Arizona; NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute; NASA/JPL.

8 types

Meet the eight planets of the Solar System, from rocky Mercury to the ice giant Neptune, in real spacecraft images, and see how they compare.

In this collection

  1. Mercury
  2. Venus
  3. Earth
  4. Mars
  5. Jupiter
  6. Saturn
  7. Uranus
  8. Neptune

Each type up close

About this topic

Eight planets orbit the Sun. The four closest, Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars, are small rocky worlds. Beyond them are two gas giants, Jupiter and Saturn, and two ice giants, Uranus and Neptune. In our collection image the planets are shown at a similar size so you can see them clearly; in reality Jupiter is more than 11 times wider than Earth.

What about Pluto?

Pluto was counted as the ninth planet until 2006, when the International Astronomical Union defined the word planet more strictly. Pluto is now classed as a dwarf planet, one of many small worlds in the Kuiper Belt beyond Neptune.

The planets at a glance

PlanetTypeDiameterAverage distance from the SunOne orbit (year)
MercuryRocky4,879 km57.9 million km88 Earth days
VenusRocky12,104 km108.2 million km225 Earth days
EarthRocky12,756 km149.6 million km365 days
MarsRocky6,792 km228.0 million km687 Earth days
JupiterGas giant142,984 km778.5 million kmAbout 11.9 Earth years
SaturnGas giant120,536 km1,432 million kmAbout 29.4 Earth years
UranusIce giant51,118 km2,867 million kmAbout 84 Earth years
NeptuneIce giant49,528 km4,515 million kmAbout 164 Earth years

Sources

All Space & Astronomy