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This article describes extreme locations of the Solar System. Entries listed in bold are Solar System-wide extremes.
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This article describes extreme locations of the Solar System. Entries listed in bold are Solar System-wide extremes.
| Record | Data | Feature | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|
| Largest canyon | 4000 km long, 200 km wide | Valles Marineris, Mars | [1] |
| Tallest mountain | 22 km (13.6 mi) | Rheasilvia central peak, Vesta | [2] [3] |
| Tallest volcano | 25 km (15.5 mi) | Olympus Mons, Mars | [4] |
| Tallest cliff | 20 km (12.4 mi) | Verona Rupes, Miranda, Uranus | [5] |
| Largest impact crater | 2,700 km (1,700 mi) | North Polar Basin, Mars | [6] |
| Type | Average density | Average temperature | Average surface gravity | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lowest | Highest | Lowest | Highest | Lowest | Highest | |
| Star | 1.4 g/cm3 | 5778 K | 274 m/s2 | |||
| Major planet | 0.7 g/cm3 Saturn [12] [13] | 5.51 g/cm3 Earth | 73 K | 733 K | 3.70 m/s2 Mercury | 23.1 m/s2 Jupiter |
| Dwarf planet | 1.4 ±0.2 g/cm3 Orcus [20] [NB 1] | 2.52 ±0.05 g/cm3 Eris [21] | 30 K | 167 K | ≈0.2 m/s2 Orcus | 0.8 m/s2 Eris |
| Major moon of major or dwarf planet [NB 2] | 0.98 g/cm3 Tethys | 3.53 g/cm3 Io [22] [23] | 38 K Triton [24] | 250 K Moon [25] | 0.064 m/s2 Mimas | 1.796 m/s2 Io |
| Type | Escape velocity | Mass | Volume (radius) | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lowest | Highest | Lowest | Highest | Lowest | Highest | |
| Star | 617.7 km/s Sun | 332,830 MEarth Sun | 695,000 km Sun | |||
| Major planet | 4.3 k m/s Mercury [18] | 59.5 km/s Jupiter [18] | 0.055 MEarth Mercury [28] | 318 MEarth Jupiter [26] | 2500 km Mercury [29] | 69911 k m Jupiter [28] |
| Dwarf planet | ≈0.43 k m/s Orcus | 1.3 km/s Eris | 0.0000916 MEarth Orcus [20] [NB 3] | 0.0028 MEarth Eris | 487.3 km Ceres | 1187 km Pluto |
| Major moon of major or dwarf planet [NB 2] | 0.16 km/s Mimas | 2.74 km/s Ganymede | 0.000006 MEarth Mimas | 0.0250 MEarth Ganymede [30] | 198 km Mimas | 2634 km Ganymede [22] [30] |
| Extreme characteristic | Major planet | Dwarf planet | Major moon (of a major or dwarf planet) [NB 2] |
|---|---|---|---|
| Densest atmosphere | Venus [NB 4] [31] [32] | Pluto | Titan [31] |
| Astronomical body | Elevation (height above/below datum) | Elevation (height above/below base) | Surface temperature | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Highest | Lowest | Highest | Lowest | Highest | Lowest | |
| Sun | N/A | 5,000,000 K In a solar flare | 1240 K In a sunspot | |||
| Mercury | 3 kilometres (1.9 mi) Caloris Montes, northwest Caloris Basin rim mountains | 723 K Dayside of Mercury | 89 K Permanently shaded polar craters | |||
| Venus | 11 kilometres (6.8 mi) Maxwell Montes, Ishtar Terra | 3 kilometres (1.9 mi) Diana Chasma, Aphrodite Terra | 755 K lowlands of Venus | 644 K Maxwell Montes, Ishtar Terra | ||
| Earth | 8,848 metres (29,029 ft) Mount Everest, Nepal - Tibet, China | 10,971 metres (35,994 ft) Challenger Deep, Mariana Trench, Pacific Ocean | 10,200 metres (33,500 ft) Mauna Kea, Hawaii, United States of America | 7 kilometres (4.3 mi) Mariana Trench, Pacific Ocean | 330 K Furnace Creek Ranch, Death Valley, United States (more info) | 184 K Vostok Station, Antarctica (more info) |
| Mars | 27 kilometres (17 mi) Olympus Mons, Tharsis [44] | 6 kilometres (3.7 mi) Hellas Planitia | 24 kilometres (15 mi) Olympus Mons, Tharsis [48] | 9 kilometres (5.6 mi) Melas Chasma, Valles Marineris | 293 K Martian equator in midsummer day | 120 K Martian poles in the depths of winter night |
| Jupiter | N/A | 152 K | 110 K | |||
| Saturn | N/A | 143 K | 82 K | |||
| Uranus | N/A | 68 K | 59 K | |||
| Neptune | N/A | 53 K [54] | 50 K [54] | |||
| Moon | 10,786 metres (35,387 ft) 5.4125°, 201.3665° [55] [56] | 9.06 kilometres (5.63 mi) Antoniadi Crater (-172.58°E, 70.38°S) | 400 K midday on the equator [57] | 26 K Permanently shadowed southwestern edge of the northern polar zone Hermite Crater in winter solstice [57] | ||
| Io | 17.3 kilometres (10.7 mi) Boosaule Montes [58] [59] | |||||
| Europa | 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) conical mountain (34.5N, 169.5W) [60] | 132 K Subsolar temperature [61] | ||||
| Ganymede | 156 K Subsolar temperature [61] | 80 K Nighttime temperature [62] | ||||
| Callisto | 168 K Subsolar temperature [61] | 80 K Predawn nighttime temperature [63] | ||||
| Titan | 2 km (1.2 mi) Mithrim Montes, Xanadu [64] | |||||
| Mimas | ||||||
| Enceladus | 110 K Tiger Stripes [65] | |||||
| Tethys | ||||||
| Dione | ||||||
| Rhea | ||||||
| Iapetus | 20 kilometres (12 mi) Voyager Mountains, equatorial ridge and bulge | |||||
| Ariel | ||||||
| Umbriel | ||||||
| Titania | ||||||
| Oberon | ||||||
| Miranda | 20 kilometers (12 mi) | |||||
| Triton | ||||||
| Nereid | ||||||
| Proteus | ||||||
| Charon | ||||||
| Ceres | 4.5 kilometres (2.8 mi) Ahuna Mons | 235 K | ||||
| Pluto | 3.4 km (2.1 mi) Norgay Montes, Tombaugh Regio [72] | 45 K | 35 K [73] | |||
| Eris | 41 K | 30 K | ||||
| Makemake | ||||||
| Haumea | ||||||
| The bodies included in this table are: (1) planemos; (2) major planets, dwarf planets, or moons of major or dwarf planets, or stars; (3) hydrostatically round so as to be able to provide a geodetic datum line. | ||||||
A planet is a large, rounded astronomical body that is generally required to be in orbit around a star, stellar remnant, or brown dwarf, and is not one itself. The Solar System has eight planets by the most restrictive definition of the term: the terrestrial planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars, and the giant planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. The best available theory of planet formation is the nebular hypothesis, which posits that an interstellar cloud collapses out of a nebula to create a young protostar orbited by a protoplanetary disk. Planets grow in this disk by the gradual accumulation of material driven by gravity, a process called accretion.
The Solar System is the gravitationally bound system of the Sun and the objects that orbit it. It formed about 4.6 billion years ago when a dense region of a molecular cloud collapsed, forming the Sun and a protoplanetary disc. The Sun is a typical star that maintains a balanced equilibrium by the fusion of hydrogen into helium at its core, releasing this energy from its outer photosphere. Astronomers classify it as a G-type main-sequence star.
Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a mass more than 2.5 times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined and slightly less than one-thousandth the mass of the Sun. Its diameter is eleven times that of Earth, and a tenth that of the Sun. Jupiter orbits the Sun at a distance of 5.20 AU (778.5 Gm), with an orbital period of 11.86 years. It is the third brightest natural object in the Earth's night sky, after the Moon and Venus, and has been observed since prehistoric times. Its name derives from that of Jupiter, the chief deity of ancient Roman religion.
Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second largest in the Solar System, after Jupiter. It is a gas giant, with an average radius of about nine times that of Earth. It has an eighth the average density of Earth, but is over 95 times more massive. Even though Saturn is almost as big as Jupiter, Saturn has less than a third the mass of Jupiter. Saturn orbits the Sun at a distance of 9.59 AU (1,434 million km), with an orbital period of 29.45 years.
Rhea is the second-largest moon of Saturn and the ninth-largest moon in the Solar System, with a surface area that is comparable to the area of Australia. It is the smallest body in the Solar System for which precise measurements have confirmed a shape consistent with hydrostatic equilibrium. Rhea has a nearly circular orbit around Saturn, but it is also tidally locked, like Saturn's other major moons; that is, it rotates with the same period it revolves (orbits), so one hemisphere always faces towards the planet.
Belinda is an inner satellite of the planet Uranus. Belinda was discovered from the images taken by Voyager 2 on 13 January 1986 and was given the temporary designation S/1986 U 5. It is named after the heroine of Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock. It is also designated Uranus XIV.
A protoplanetary disk is a rotating circumstellar disc of dense gas and dust surrounding a young newly formed star, a T Tauri star, or Herbig Ae/Be star. The protoplanetary disk may not be considered an accretion disk, while the two are similar. While they are similar, an accretion disk is hotter, and spins much faster. It is also found on black holes, not stars. This process should not be confused with the accretion process thought to build up the planets themselves. Externally illuminated photo-evaporating protoplanetary disks are called proplyds.
The Hill sphere is a common model for the calculation of a gravitational sphere of influence. It is the most commonly used model to calculate the spatial extent of gravitational influence of an astronomical body (m) in which it dominates over the gravitational influence of other bodies, particularly a primary (M). It is sometimes confused with other models of gravitational influence, such as the Laplace sphere or being named the Roche sphere, the latter causing confusion with the Roche limit. It was defined by the American astronomer George William Hill, based on the work of the French astronomer Édouard Roche.
Perdita is an inner satellite of Uranus. Perdita's discovery was very complicated, as the first photographs of Perdita were taken by the Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1986, but it was not recognized from the photographs for more than a decade. In 1999, the moon was noticed by Erich Karkoschka and reported. But because no further pictures could be taken to confirm its existence, it was officially demoted in 2001. However, in 2003, pictures taken by the Hubble Space Telescope managed to pick up an object where Perdita was supposed to be, finally confirming its existence.
Mab, or Uranus XXVI, is an inner satellite of Uranus. It was discovered by Mark R. Showalter and Jack J. Lissauer in 2003 using the Hubble Space Telescope. It was named after Queen Mab, a fairy queen from English folklore who is mentioned in William Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet.
An ice giant is a giant planet composed mainly of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium, such as oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur. There are two ice giants in the Solar System: Uranus and Neptune.
Gliese 876 c is an exoplanet orbiting the red dwarf Gliese 876, taking about 30 days to complete an orbit. The planet was discovered in April 2001 and is the second planet in order of increasing distance from its star.
Upsilon Andromedae d, formally named Majriti, is a super-Jupiter exoplanet orbiting within the habitable zone of the Sun-like star Upsilon Andromedae A, approximately 44 light-years away from Earth in the constellation of Andromeda. Its discovery made it the first multiplanetary system to be discovered around a main-sequence star, and the first such system known in a multiple star system. The exoplanet was found by using the radial velocity method, where periodic Doppler shifts of spectral lines of the host star suggest an orbiting object.
There is evidence that the formation of the Solar System began about 4.6 billion years ago with the gravitational collapse of a small part of a giant molecular cloud. Most of the collapsing mass collected in the center, forming the Sun, while the rest flattened into a protoplanetary disk out of which the planets, moons, asteroids, and other small Solar System bodies formed.
HD 69830 d is an exoplanet likely orbiting within the habitable zone of the star HD 69830, the outermost of three such planets discovered in the system. It is located approximately 40.7 light-years (12.49 parsecs, or 3.8505×1014 km) from Earth in the constellation of Puppis. The exoplanet was found by using the radial velocity method, from radial-velocity measurements via observation of Doppler shifts in the spectrum of the planet's parent star.
A planetary-mass moon is a planetary-mass object that is also a natural satellite. They are large and ellipsoidal in shape. Moons may be in hydrostatic equilibrium due to tidal or radiogenic heating, in some cases forming a subsurface ocean. Two moons in the Solar System, Ganymede and Titan, are larger than the planet Mercury, and a third, Callisto, is just slightly smaller than it, although all three are less massive. Additionally, seven – Ganymede, Titan, Callisto, Io, Earth's Moon, Europa, and Triton – are larger and more massive than the dwarf planets Pluto and Eris.
Kepler-11, also designated as 2MASS J19482762+4154328, is a Sun-like star slightly larger than the Sun in the constellation Cygnus, located some 2,110 light years from Earth. It is located within the field of vision of the Kepler space telescope, the satellite that NASA's Kepler Mission uses to detect planets that may be transiting their stars. Announced on February 2, 2011, the star system is among the most compact and flattest systems yet discovered. It is the first discovered case of a star system with six transiting planets. All discovered planets are larger than Earth, with the larger ones being about Neptune's size.
Kepler-11c is an exoplanet discovered in the orbit of the Sun-like star Kepler-11 by the Kepler space telescope, a NASA telescope aiming to discover Earth-like planets. It is the second planet from its star, and is most likely a water planet with a thin hydrogen–helium atmosphere. Kepler-11c orbits Kepler-11 every 10 days, and has an estimated density twice that of pure water. It is estimated to have a mass thirteen times that of Earth and a radius three times that of Earth. Kepler-11c and its five sister planets form the first discovered system with more than three transiting planets. The Kepler-11 system also holds the record of being the most compact and the flattest system discovered. Kepler-11c and the other Kepler-11 planets were announced to the public on February 2, 2011, and was published in Nature a day later.
Kepler-37b is an exoplanet orbiting the star Kepler-37 in the constellation Lyra. As of February 2013, it is the smallest planet discovered around a main-sequence star, with a radius slightly greater than that of the Moon and slightly smaller than that of Mercury. The measurements do not constrain its mass, but masses above a few times that of the Moon give unphysically high densities.
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See also: Formation and evolution of the Solar System, list of the Solar System's objects by discovery date, by orbit, and by radius or mass, and the Solar System Portal | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
