Abstract
Our Sun is a star of intermediate size with a set of major planets describing closed orbits around it. These are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Pluto, considered the Solar System’s ninth planet until 2006, was reclassified by the International Astronomical Union as a dwarf planet, due to its very small mass, together with other trans-Neptunian objects (Haumea, Makemake, Eris, Sedna, and others) recently discovered in that zone, called the Kuiper belt. Except for Mercury and Venus, all planets and even certain dwarf planets have satellites. Some of them, like the Moon and a few of the Jovian satellites, are relatively large. Between Mars and Jupiter, there are a lot of small planets or asteroids moving in a wide zone, the largest one being Ceres, classified as a dwarf planet.
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Chaichian, M., Rojas, H.P., Tureanu, A. (2014). Gravitation and Newton’s Laws. In: Basic Concepts in Physics. Undergraduate Lecture Notes in Physics. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-19598-3_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-19598-3_1
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