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The Solar System consists of the Sun and the other celestial objects gravitationally bound to it: the eight planets, their moons, five currently identified dwarf planets and their seven 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 lies 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 gods and goddesses from Greco-Roman mythology. The five dwarf planets are Pluto, Makemake, and Haumea, the three largest known Kuiper belt objects; Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt; and Eris, the largest known object in the scattered disc. Template:/box-footer
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Earth is the third planet from the Sun and is the largest of the terrestrial planets in the Solar System, in both diameter and mass. Home to the human species, it is also referred to as "the Earth", "Planet Earth", " Gaia", " Terra", "the World", and "the Blue Planet".
The Earth is the first planet known to have liquid water on the surface and is the only place in the universe known to harbor life. Earth has a magnetic field that, together with a primarily nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere, protects the surface from radiation that is harmful to life. The atmosphere also serves as a shield that causes smaller meteors to burn up before they strike the surface.
The Earth formed around 4.57 billion years ago and its only known natural satellite, the Moon, began orbiting it around 4.53 billion years ago. At present, the Earth orbits the Sun once for every roughly 366.26 times it rotates about its axis (which is equal to 365.26 solar days). The Earth's axis of rotation is tilted 23.5° (away from the perpendicular to its orbital plane), producing seasonal variations on the planet's surface.
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A TRACE image of sunspots on the surface, or photosphere, of the sun from September 2002, is taken in the far ultraviolet on a relatively quiet day for solar activity. However, the image still shows a large sunspot group visible as a bright area near the horizon. Although sunspots are relatively cool regions on the surface of the sun, the bright glowing gas flowing around the sunspots have a temperature of over one million °C (1.8 million °F). The high temperatures are thought to be related to the rapidly changing magnetic field loops that channel solar plasma.
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- ...that although NASA originally thought that there was only one scalloped margin dome on the planet Venus (pictured), they have since discovered hundreds of them?
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