The research paper aims at exploring some of the significant components of the solar system. The report gives special preference to the Moon, Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, and Jupiter. It discusses some of their unique characteristics and the origin of their names. The sun forms the heart of the solar system. Neighboring planets of the sun create the terrestrial and rocky worlds. The planets are Venus, Earth, Mercury, and Mars. The other planets are the gas giants, Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune, and Saturn. There is an asteroid belt between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars. The belt also consists of the dwarf Ceres planet (Grego, 2007). Beyond Neptune, there is a disk-shaped Kuiper belt that carries the dwarf planet Pluto. What is found beyond that is the giant spherical cloud and teardrop shaped Heliopause. The sun produces a high amount of electromagnetic energy in the form of light and heat. The planets, as well as the asteroids and satellites, revolve around the sun in circular orbits and follow the same direction. The planets revolve in counterclockwise order (Grego, 2007).&nbsp.

Literature review

Activities concerning astronomy started with the Greeks. Aristotle, a Greek philosopher, was of the view that the earth is positioned at the core of the universe. Ptolemy then proposed a model of how the planets move in the solar system. In 1543, Nicolaus Copernicus published his hypothesis. The hypothesis stated that the sun forms the centre of the universe. The church had already adopted Aristotle’s teaching and could, therefore, not believe Nicolaus Copernicus notion. In 1964, after the appearance of a supernova, Galileo developed his first telescope. With it, he saw the Saturn’s ring, moons of Jupiter, the Milky Way, and the phases of Venus. The scientist then published the findings in The Starry Messenger (Meara, 2010).

Isaac Newton, in his early 20s, discovered that the gravitational force was responsible for the falling objects on Earth and the motion of the planets in orbits and the moon. Einstein’s theory of relativity surpassed Newton’s model of gravity. Einstein’s view was that the gravitational force is the response of objects to disturbances in space. For the past years, studies of the solar system continue to get improvements. The improvements are of help to humanity (Meara, 2010).

Findings

For millennia, various astronomers have had a particular focus on the points of light that seem to make movements among the stars. The early Greeks gave the names of the planets by referring them as wanderers. Saturn, Jupiter, Mercury, Mars, and Venus were recognized in antiquity. The invention of the telescope helped reveal the asteroid belt, Neptune, Pluto, Uranus, and other world’s moons.