The Birth of the Solar System:

Our solar system was formed about 4.5 billion years ago from a dense cloud of
interstellar gas and dust. This gas cloud collapsed under its own gravity. The cloud
collapsed, possibly due to the shockwave of a nearby exploding star, called a
supernova. When this dust cloud collapsed, it formed a solar nebula – a spinning,
swirling disk of material. It has been learned that the gas that made up the solar
nebula contained 98% hydrogen and helium and only 2% all other elements
combined.The Sun and planets were born from this gas.The Earth and other objects
of the solar system were made primarily from the heavier elements. So we are star
stuff because we and our planet are made of elements forged in stars that lived and
died long ago.

Diagram representing the process of formation of our solar system

 At the center, gravity pulled more and more material in. Eventually, the pressure in
the core was so great that hydrogen atoms began to combine and form helium,
releasing a tremendous amount of energy. With that, our Sun was born, and it
eventually amassed more than 99% of the available matter. Matter farther out in the
disk was also clumping together. These clumps smashed into one another, forming
larger and larger objects. Some of them grew big enough for their gravity to shape
them into spheres, becoming planets, dwarf planets, and large moons. In other
cases, planets did not form: the asteroid belt is made of bits and pieces of the early
solar system that could never quite come together into a planet. Other smaller
leftover pieces became asteroids, comets, meteoroids, and small, irregular moons.
Composition of the Solar system:
Our planetary system is called “the solar system” because we use the word “solar”
to describe things related to our star, after the Latin word for Sun, "solis”. Our solar
system is made up of a star, eight planets and countless smaller bodies such as
dwarf planets, asteroids and comets. Apart from these, there are meteors and
meteorites, Kuiper belt objects and the Oort cloud

● Inner planets/ Terrestrial planets

The planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars, are called terrestrial because they
have a compact, rocky surface. The terrestrial planets are the four innermost
planets in the solar system. None of the terrestrial planets have rings. Only Earth
has a substantial planetary magnetic field.

The inner planets have rocky compositions and densities greater than 3 grams per
cubic cm. (Water has a density of 1 gram per cubic cm.). The terrestrial planets
(Venus, Earth, and Mars) are formed in the warm, inner regions of the swirling
disk.
● How are terrestrial planets formed?
The solar nebula consists of four types of materials.

❏ Hydrogen and helium gas (comprises about 98% )

This gases never condense in interstellar space

❏ Hydrogen compounds ( about 1.4% of solar nebula)

Materials such as H2O, methane (CH4), ammonia (NH3) can

solidify into ices at low temperatures

❏ Rock (about 0.4% of solar nebula)

Rocky material is gaseous at very high temperatures, but

condenses into solid bits of mineral at temperatures between
500 K and 1300 K.

❏ Metal (about 0.2% of solar nebula)

Metals such as iron, nickel and aluminium are gaseous at very

high temperatures, but condenses into solid forms at higher
temperatures (between 1000 K and 1600 K).

Close to the forming Sun, where the temperature was above 1600 K, it was too hot
for any material to condense.

Near, what is now mercury’s orbit, the temperature was low enough for metals and
some type of rocks to condense into tiny, solid particles. But other types of rocks
and all hydrogen compounds remained gaseous. More types of rocks and metals
cold condense at larger distances from the Sun where Venus, Earth and Mars would
form.

In the region where the asteroid belt is located, temperatures were low enough to
allow dark, carbon-rich minerals to condensate. Hydrogen compounds could
condense into ices only beyond the frost line.
 The solid seeds of metal and rock gradually grew into the terrestrial planets. The
process by which small seeds grew into planets is called accretion.

● How are jovian planets formed?

Accretion occurs similarly in the outer solar system as well. But condensation of
ices meant that there were more solid materials. The planetesimals in the outer
solar system contained large amounts of ice in addition to metal and rock. The
solid objects that reside in the outer solar system today, such as comets and the
moons of jovian planets, still show this ice-rich composition.

Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune are known as the Jovian (Jupiter-like) planets,
because they are all gigantic compared with Earth, and they have a gaseous nature.
For example, Jupiter is mostly hydrogen, with some helium and trace gases and
ices. The Jovian planets are thus referred to as the "gas giants" because gas is what
they are mostly made of, although some or all of them probably have small solid
cores. All have significant planetary magnetic fields, rings, and lots of satellites.

● Properties of jovian planets:

Jovian planets are :

● massive, made of gases (hydrogen and helium, primarily),
● have low density (compared to terrestrial planets),
● are extremely cold, have extraordinary winds and storms,
● have many moons and ring systems,
● are not habitable for life,
● have huge gravitational and magnetic fields,
 ● do not have solid surfaces.
●
● What is the difference between Jovian planets and terrestrial planets?

Jovian planets are massive, gaseous planets that extend far from the sun, do not
have solid surfaces, have many moons and rings, undergo tremendous winds and
storms, and have low densities. Terrestrial planets are smaller, are made of rock
and metal, may have up to 2 moons, no rings, higher densities, are located close to
the sun, and do not have winds as forceful as the Jovian planets.

● Dwarf Planets:
A dwarf planet is a small planetary-mass object that directly orbits around the
Sun, massive enough to be gravitationally rounded, but insufficient to achieve
orbital dominance like the eight classical planets of the Solar System.

Clearing the neighbourhood (or dynamical dominance) means the celestial

body becomes gravitationally dominant such that there are no other bodies of
comparable size other than its natural satellites. Clearing the neighbourhood is
one of three necessary criteria for a celestial body to be considered a planet in the
Solar System, according to the definition adopted in 2006 by the International
Astronomical Union (IAU).

In the 1990s, astronomers began to find objects in the same region of space as
Pluto (now known as the Kuiper belt), and some even farther away. Many of these
shared several of Pluto's key orbital characteristics, and Pluto started being seen as
the largest member of a new class of objects, the plutinos.It became clear that
either the larger of these bodies would also have to be classified as planets, or Pluto
would have to be reclassified. This led some astronomers to stop referring to Pluto
as a planet. Astronomers were also confident that more objects as large as Pluto
would be discovered, and the number of planets would start growing quickly if
Pluto were to remain classified as a planet.

Pluto was regarded as a planet earlier, but has been considered as a dwarf planet
since 2006 because it fails to satisfy the dynamical dominance condition.
Astronomers are in general agreement that at least the eight largest candidates are
dwarf planets – in rough order of size, Pluto, Eris, Haumea, Makemake,
 Gonggong, Quaoar, Sedna and Ceres.

● What is an Asteroid Belt?

The asteroid belt is a torus-shaped region in the Solar System, centered on
the Sun and roughly spanning the space between the orbits of the planets
Jupiter and Mars. The asteroid belt is the smallest and innermost known
circumstellar disc in the Solar System. It contains many solid, irregularly
shaped bodies called asteroids or minor planets. The identified objects are of
many sizes, but much smaller than planets.This asteroid belt is also called
the main asteroid belt or main belt to distinguish it from other asteroid
populations in the Solar System.

About 60% of the main belt mass is contained in the four largest asteroids:
Ceres, Vesta, Pallas, and Hygiea. The total mass of the asteroid belt is
estimated to be 3% that of the Moon

Ceres, the only object in the asteroid belt large enough to be a dwarf planet,
is about 950 km in diameter, whereas Vesta, Pallas, and Hygiea have mean
diameters less than 600 km. The remaining bodies range down to the size of
a dust particle.

● What are Meteoroids / Meteors?

A meteoroid is a small rocky or metallic body in outer space. The word meteor
comes from the Greek word meteōros, meaning "high in the air". Meteoroids are
distinguished as objects significantly smaller than asteroids, ranging in size from
grains to objects up to a meter wide. Objects smaller than meteoroids are classified
as micrometeoroids or space dust.

Millions of meteors occur in Earth's atmosphere daily. Most meteoroids that cause
meteors are about the size of a grain of sand, i.e. they are usually millimeter-sized
or smaller. A series of many meteors appearing seconds or minutes apart and
appearing to originate from the same fixed point in the sky is called a meteor
shower.

A meteor, known colloquially as a shooting star or falling star, is the visible

passage of a glowing meteoroid, comet or asteroid through Earth's atmosphere.
 When a meteoroid is heated to incandescence by collisions with air molecules in
the upper atmosphere, it creates a streak of light via its rapid motion and
sometimes also by shedding glowing material in its wake. Meteors may occur in
showers, which arise when Earth passes through a stream of debris left by a comet.
Meteors become visible between about 75 to 120 km (250,000 to 390,000 ft) above
Earth. They usually disintegrate at altitudes of 50 to 95 km (160,000 to 310,000 ft).

● What are Meteorites?

A meteorite is a portion of a meteoroid or asteroid that survives its passage through
the atmosphere and hits the ground without being destroyed. Meteorites are
sometimes, but not always, found in association with hypervelocity impact craters;
during energetic collisions, the entire impactor may be vaporized, leaving no
meteorites. Meteoroids also hit other bodies in the Solar System. On such stony
bodies as the Moon or Mars that have little or no atmosphere, they leave enduring
craters. Most meteorites are stony meteorites. Only about 6% of meteorites are iron
meteorites or a blend of rock and metal, called the stony-iron meteorites.

● What are Comets?

A comet is an icy, small Solar System body that warms and begins to release gases
when passing close to the Sun. This produces an extended, gravitationally unbound
atmosphere or coma surrounding the nucleus, and sometimes a tail of gas and dust
gas blown out from the coma.
Comets usually have highly eccentric elliptical orbits, and they have a wide range
of orbital periods, ranging from several years to potentially several millions of
years. Short-period comets originate in the Kuiper belt. Long-period comets are
thought to originate in the Oort cloud.
In the outer Solar System, comets remain frozen and inactive and are extremely
difficult or impossible to detect from Earth due to their small size. As a comet
approaches the inner Solar System, solar radiation causes the volatile materials
within the comet to vaporize and stream out of the nucleus, carrying dust away
with them.
The streams of dust and gas each form their own distinct tail, pointing in slightly
different directions. The tail of dust is left behind in the comet's orbit in such a
manner that it often forms a curved tail called the type II or dust tail. At the same
time, the ion or type I tail, made of gases, always points directly away from the
 Sun because this gas is more strongly affected by the solar wind than is dust.

● What are Kuiper belt objects?

The Kuiper Belt is a doughnut-shaped region of icy bodies extending far beyond
the orbit of Neptune. It is home to Pluto and Arrokoth. There may be millions of
other icy worlds in the Kuiper Belt that were left over from the formation of our
solar system. Scientists call these worlds Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs), or
trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs). Trans-Neptunian objects are objects in our solar
system that have an orbit beyond Neptune. The small Kuiper Belt object known as
Arrokoth is the most distant and most primitive object ever explored by a
spacecraft.

● What are Oort clouds?

In 1950, astronomer Jan Oort proposed that certain comets come from a vast,
extremely distant spherical shell of icy bodies surrounding the solar system. This
giant swarm of objects, named the Oort Cloud, occupies space at a distance
between 5,000 and 100,000 astronomical units.
The cloud is thought to comprise two regions: a disc-shaped inner Oort cloud
aligned with the solar ecliptic (also called its Hills cloud) and a spherical outer
Oort cloud enclosing the entire Solar System. The innermost portion of the Oort
cloud is more than a thousand times as distant from the Sun as are the Kuiper belt.
The outer limit of the Oort cloud defines the cosmographic boundary of the Solar
System.

Note: The Kuiper Belt shouldn't be confused with the Oort Cloud, which is a much
more distant region of icy, comet-like bodies that surrounds the solar system,
 including the Kuiper Belt. Both the Oort Cloud and the Kuiper Belt are thought to
be sources of comets.

● What are Exoplanets?

An exoplanet is any planet beyond our solar system. Most of them orbit other stars,
but free-floating exoplanets, called rogue planets, orbit the galactic center and are
untethered to any star. By measuring exoplanets’ sizes (diameters) and masses
(weights), we can see compositions ranging from very rocky (like Earth and
Venus) to very gas-rich (like Jupiter and Saturn). Some planets may be dominated
by water or ice, while others are dominated by iron or carbon. The first exoplanets
were discovered in the 1990s and since then we’ve identified thousands using a
variety of detection methods.