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Solar System

The Solar System consists of the Sun and the other celestial objects gravitationally bound to it: the eight planets, their 166 known moons, three dwarf planets (Ceres, Pluto, and Eris and their four known moons), and billions of small bodies. This last category includes asteroids, Kuiper belt objects, comets, meteoroids, and interplanetary dust.

In broad terms, the charted regions of the Solar System consist of the Sun, four terrestrial inner planets, an asteroid belt composed of small rocky bodies, four gas giant outer planets, and a second belt, called the Kuiper belt, composed of icy objects. Beyond the Kuiper belt is the scattered disc, the heliopause, and ultimately the hypothetical Oort cloud.

In order of their distances from the Sun, the planets are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Six of the eight planets are in turn orbited by natural satellites, usually termed "moons" after Earth's Moon, and each of the outer planets is encircled by planetary rings of dust and other particles. All the planets except Earth are named after deities from Greco-Roman mythology. The three dwarf planets are Pluto, the largest known Kuiper belt object; Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt; and Eris, the largest of the three which lies in the scattered disc.