Chapter 1: The Central Star: The Sun

The Sun is the cornerstone of our Solar System. Essentially, it comprises 99% of the entire mass in the system. This includes the eight major planets, countless asteroids and comets, a multitude of minor planets, moons, and a cloud of gas and dust, all of which make up less than 1% of the system's total mass.

Upon querying an AI for “a map of the solar system,” it produced an unsatisfactory result. However, I’m not particularly concerned. The Sun is enormous—about a million times the volume of Earth, with ample space in between, akin to stacking golf balls. It boasts a diameter ten times that of Earth and is 333,000 times more massive. Each second, the Sun consumes 600 million tons of hydrogen, a process that has been ongoing for five billion years and is expected to continue for another four billion. Of this, four million tons convert into energy that originates at its core and takes hundreds of thousands of years to reach the surface. The energy travels from atom to atom for eons before finally escaping and traveling through space at light speed.

Chapter 2: The Giant Planet: Jupiter

Jupiter accounts for approximately 70% of the remaining mass in the solar system. While often dubbed a “failed star,” it would need to be about 80 times more massive to initiate nuclear fusion and become a red dwarf. Even at that size, it would still represent less than 1% of the Sun’s mass. Jupiter exerts significant influence over the solar system. With at least 63 moons, many of which orbit at considerable distances and are misaligned with Jupiter’s equator, its gravitational pull also traps swarms of asteroids in its Lagrange points, occasionally shielding the inner solar system from comets.

Chapter 3: The Misunderstood Asteroids

Asteroids are often misrepresented in films, depicted as dense clusters of large rocks colliding with one another. I believe this stereotype stems from movies like Star Wars. In reality, asteroids are, on average, separated by millions of miles, all orbiting in the same plane at a consistent distance from the Sun and traveling at similar speeds. They are relatively small and have minimal gravitational influence on one another. If one were to traverse the “Asteroid Belt,” the likelihood of encountering anything significant would be virtually zero. If I were to task my AI art program to illustrate a journey through the asteroid belt, I would anticipate a depiction of nothingness.

A common misconception about the Asteroid Belt is that it is a “failed planet.” While it’s conceivable that there were enough asteroids in the early solar system to form a planet, today, the combined mass of all asteroids is merely about 3% that of Earth's Moon. Only one asteroid, Ceres, qualifies as a minor planet or planetoid, measuring 950 km in diameter, while the remainder are irregularly shaped fragments.

I trust this brief exploration has piqued your interest. I recently encountered another article on Medium that contained numerous inaccuracies about space, prompting me to clarify some points.

If you notice any mistakes in my explanation, please feel free to reach out!

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