Solar System Au Distances

The solar system is the gravitationally bound system of the sun and the objects that orbit it either directly or indirectly.

Solar system au distances.

It is defined to be exactly 1 00 for the earth sun orbit distance and we call this distance 1 00 aus. The actual distance varies as earth orbits the sun from a maximum to a minimum and back again once each year the au was originally conceived as the average of earth s aphelion and perihelion. Distances in the solar system are commonly measured in astronomical units. An au is simply the average distance between the earth and the sun.

An au is equal to 149 600 000 km. Of the objects that orbit the sun directly the largest are the eight planets with the remainder being smaller objects the dwarf planets and small solar system bodies of the objects that orbit the sun indirectly the moons two are larger than the smallest planet. Figures 1 and 3 illustrate locations of various objects in the solar system and their distances from the sun. The distances are expressed in astronomical units abbreviated as au.

Because the earth s orbit around the sun is an ellipse the earth is not always the same distance from the sun. This artist s concept puts solar system distances in perspective. Problem 1 the table below gives the distance from the sun of the eight planets in our solar system. Astronomers like to list the distances to objects within our solar system planets dwarf planets asteroids comets spacecraft etc in terms of the astronomical unit or au.

So for cosmic distances we switch to whole other types of units. Let me explain a bit more about those. Au or au is a unit of length roughly the distance from earth to the sun and equal to about 150 million kilometres 93 million miles. The astronomical unit symbol.

One astronomical unit is the approximate distance from earth to the sun. The scale bar is in astronomical units with each set distance beyond 1 au representing 10 times the previous distance. Astronomical units light years and parsecs. Today my focus is to show the distances between them.

The table below shows the eight planets and the average distance between them. Astronomers use the distance between earth and sun which is 93 million miles as a new unit of measure called the astronomical unit. 1 au is the distance from the sun to earth which is 149 600 000 km. Astronomical unit a unit of length effectively equal to the average or mean distance between earth and the sun defined as 149 597 870 7 km 92 955 807 3 miles.

The au column is the distance in astronomical units. There is a huge amount of different in the distances between the planets depending on their position on their orbit path. One au is the distance from the sun to earth s orbit which is about 93 million miles 150 million kilometers. Astronomical units abbreviated au are a useful unit of measure within our solar system.