"and that Mars could hardly support any macroscopic life forms on its surface, much less an advanced civilization. In the 1980s it was shown that the surfaces of Jupiter's moons were just as hostile to life. More recent fiction focused on the Solar System has thus tended to address its exploration for purposes such as terraforming, the engineering of planets for human habitation, than the possibility of any existing life. The following works or series use multiple planets and other locations within the Solar System as their primary settings: Solar System in fiction The Solar System and its various bodies"
"Beta Pictoris b orbits its host star every 21 years at a distance of 9.2 AU (about the same as Saturn's distance, which is about 9.55 AU). It receives 11% of the amount of sunlight that Earth does from the Sun. In 2014, the rotation period of Beta Pictoris b was calculated from the broadening of its carbon monoxide infrared absorption line. This makes it, , the first extrasolar planet to have its rotation rate measured. With a rotation period of 8.1 hours, it is the fastest-spinning planet known. Its rotation period is faster than that of Jupiter, which has"
"As a result, it does not experience significant seasonal changes, in contrast to, for example, Earth and Mars. Jupiter's rotation is the fastest of all the Solar System's planets, completing a rotation on its axis in slightly less than ten hours; this creates an equatorial bulge easily seen through an Earth-based amateur telescope. The planet is shaped as an oblate spheroid, meaning that the diameter across its equator is longer than the diameter measured between its poles. On Jupiter, the equatorial diameter is longer than the diameter measured through the poles. Because Jupiter is not a solid body, its upper"
"angular momentum of the star are 1900 and 400 times, respectively, larger than those of the Sun. This causes significant classical and relativistic deviations from Kepler's laws. In particular, the fast rotation causes large nodal precession because of the star's oblateness and the Lense–Thirring effect. In April 2014, the first measurement of a planet's rotation period was announced: the length of day for the super-Jupiter gas giant Beta Pictoris b is 8 hours (based on the assumption that the axial tilt of the planet is small.) With an equatorial rotational velocity of 25 km per second, this is faster than"
"() is the ruling planet of Gemini and is exalted in Virgo and/or Aquarius. In classical Roman mythology, Mercury is the messenger of the gods, noted for his speed and swiftness. Echoing this, the scorching, airless world Mercury circles the Sun on the fastest orbit of any planet. Mercury takes only 88 days to orbit the Sun, spending about 7.33 days in each sign of the zodiac. Mercury is so close to the Sun that only a brief period exists after the Sun has set where it can be seen with the naked eye, before following the Sun beyond the"
"wide equatorial zone rotates with a period of about 18 hours, which is slower than the 16.1-hour rotation of the planet's magnetic field. By contrast, the reverse is true for the polar regions where the rotation period is 12 hours. This differential rotation is the most pronounced of any planet in the Solar System, and it results in strong latitudinal wind shear. Neptune's orbit has a profound impact on the region directly beyond it, known as the Kuiper belt. The Kuiper belt is a ring of small icy worlds, similar to the asteroid belt but far larger, extending from Neptune's"
"the innermost planet in our Solar System, Mercury, takes 88 days to orbit at a distance of 0.38 AU. The eccentricity and inclination of K2-148b's orbit are currently unknown. K2-148b orbits a late-K dwarf star known as K2-148, or EPIC 220194974. It is 63% the radius, 65% the mass, and 10% the luminosity of the Sun, with a temperature of 4079 K and an unknown age. For comparison, the Sun has a temperature of 5778 K and is 4.5 billion years old. It is orbited by a slightly smaller M0.5V red dwarf known as EPIC 220194953 at a distance of"
"As seen from Earth, the planet's orbital prograde motion makes the Sun appear to move with respect to other stars at a rate of about 1° (or a Sun or Moon diameter every 12 hours) eastward per solar day. Earth's orbital speed averages about 30 km/s (108,000 km/h; 67,000 mph), which is fast enough to cover the planet's diameter in 7 minutes and the distance to the Moon in 4 hours. From a vantage point above the north pole of either the Sun or Earth, Earth would appear to revolve in a counterclockwise direction around the Sun. From the same"
"times Earth's orbital velocity. The star was the fastest moving star ever seen in an X-ray binary system until the recent discovery of system 47 Tuc X9. On the other hand, the black hole orbits at 'only' . The black hole in this compact pairing is at least three times more massive than the Sun, while its red dwarf companion star has a mass only 20% that of the Sun. The pair is separated by roughly a million kilometers – for comparison the distance to the Sun from Earth is about 150 million kilometers. MAXI J1659-152 MAXI J1659-152 is a"
"case of millisecond pulsars. The most rapidly rotating neutron star currently known, PSR J1748-2446ad, rotates at 716 revolutions per second. A 2007 paper reported the detection of an X-ray burst oscillation, which provides an indirect measure of spin, of 1122 Hz from the neutron star XTE J1739-285, suggesting 1122 rotations a second. However, at present, this signal has only been seen once, and should be regarded as tentative until confirmed in another burst from that star. Sometimes a neutron star will undergo a glitch, a sudden small increase of its rotational speed or spin up. Glitches are thought to be"
"Neptune Neptune is the eighth and farthest known planet from the Sun in the Solar System. In the Solar System, it is the fourth-largest planet by diameter, the third-most-massive planet, and the densest giant planet. Neptune is 17 times the mass of Earth and is slightly more massive than its near-twin Uranus, which is 15 times the mass of Earth and slightly larger than Neptune. Neptune orbits the Sun once every 164.8 years at an average distance of . It is named after the Roman god of the sea and has the astronomical symbol ♆, a stylised version of the"
"suggested that the inner core of Earth may rotate slightly faster than the rest of the planet; however, more recent studies in 2011 found this hypothesis to be inconclusive. Options remain for the core which may be oscillatory in nature or a chaotic system. In August 2005 a team of geophysicists announced in the journal ""Science"" that, according to their estimates, Earth's inner core rotates approximately 0.3 to 0.5 degrees per year faster relative to the rotation of the surface. The current scientific explanation for Earth's temperature gradient is a combination of heat left over from the planet's initial formation,"
"style=""background:#a0b0ff;""| Semimajor axis ! align=center style=""background:#a0b0ff;""| Orbital period ! align=center style=""background:#a0b0ff;""| Eccentricity ! align=center style=""background:#a0b0ff;""| Inclination ! align=center style=""background:#a0b0ff;""| Radius Gliese 581e is the innermost planet and, with a minimum mass of 1.7 Earth masses, is the least massive of the three. Discovered in 2009, it is also the most recent confirmed planet to have been discovered in this system. It takes 3.15 days to complete an orbit. Initial analyses suggested that the planet's orbit is quite elliptical but after correcting the radial velocity measurements for stellar activity, the data now indicate a circular orbit. Gliese 581b is the most"
"HR 8799 e </math></ref> HR 8799 e is a large exoplanet, orbiting the star HR 8799, which lies 129 lightyears from Earth. This gas giant is between 5 and 10 times the mass of Jupiter, the largest planet in the Solar System. Due to their young age and high temperature all four discovered planets in the HR 8799 system are large, compared to all gas giants in the Solar System. HR 8799 e is the fourth planet orbiting HR 8799 in order of discovery. It is a young, hot and massive gas giant, and is fairly close to its star,"
"magnitude of 4.10 and spectral type A2Va. A rapidly rotating star, it spins at almost 200 km per second at its equator, making a complete revolution in around 14 hours. Like the star Vega, it has excess infrared radiation, which indicates it may be ringed by a disk of dust. It is currently a main-sequence star, but will eventually evolve into a white dwarf; currently, it has a luminosity 31 times greater, and a radius and mass of 2.3 times that of the Sun. Beta Coronae Australis is an orange giant 474 light years from Earth. Its spectral type is"
"Solar rotation Solar rotation varies with latitude because the Sun is composed of a gaseous plasma. The reason why different latitudes rotate at different periods is unknown. The rate of surface rotation is observed to be the fastest at the equator (latitude ) and to decrease as latitude increases. The solar rotation period is 24.47 days at the equator and almost 38 days at the poles. The differential rotation rate is usually described by the equation: where ω is the angular velocity in degrees per day, φ is the solar latitude and A, B, and C are constants. The values"
"and quickly at the equator. This profile extends on roughly radial lines through the solar convection zone to the interior. At the tachocline the rotation abruptly changes to solid-body rotation in the solar radiation zone. Solar rotation Solar rotation varies with latitude because the Sun is composed of a gaseous plasma. The reason why different latitudes rotate at different periods is unknown. The rate of surface rotation is observed to be the fastest at the equator (latitude ) and to decrease as latitude increases. The solar rotation period is 24.47 days at the equator and almost 38 days at the"
"the Sun, which it orbits every 87.97 days. Kepler-9d Kepler-9d, formerly known as KOI-377.03, is a planet in orbit around the sunlike star Kepler-9. Initially discovered by Kepler spacecraft, a terrestrial planet-searching satellite built and operated by NASA, Kepler-9d is most likely a Super-Earth, with an estimated radius approximately 60% larger than that of Earth's, although its exact mass cannot be determined. Kepler-9d orbits Kepler-9 every 1.56 days at a distance of .0273 AU from its star, an extremely close distance. Although Kepler-9d is the closest planet to its star in its system, it is named Kepler-9d instead of Kepler-9b"
"been discovered. Pulsar PSR J1748-2446ad, discovered in 2005, is, as of 2012, the fastest-spinning pulsar currently known, spinning 716 times a second. Current theories of neutron star structure and evolution predict that pulsars would break apart if they spun at a rate of c. 1500 rotations per second or more, and that at a rate of above about 1000 rotations per second they would lose energy by gravitational radiation faster than the accretion process would speed them up. However, in early 2007 data from the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer and INTEGRAL spacecraft discovered a neutron star XTE J1739-285 rotating at"
"moon Triton to be investigated around 2029. The proposed ""New Horizons 2"" mission (which was later scrapped) might also have done a close flyby of the Neptunian system. Neptune Neptune is the eighth and farthest known planet from the Sun in the Solar System. In the Solar System, it is the fourth-largest planet by diameter, the third-most-massive planet, and the densest giant planet. Neptune is 17 times the mass of Earth and is slightly more massive than its near-twin Uranus, which is 15 times the mass of Earth and slightly larger than Neptune. Neptune orbits the Sun once every 164.8"
"potential ""rogue planets"" are excluded. In the Solar System, all the planets orbit the Sun in the same direction as the Sun rotates (counter-clockwise as seen from above the Sun's north pole). At least one extrasolar planet, WASP-17b, has been found to orbit in the opposite direction to its star's rotation. The period of one revolution of a planet's orbit is known as its sidereal period or ""year"". A planet's year depends on its distance from its star; the farther a planet is from its star, not only the longer the distance it must travel, but also the slower its"
"decade to orbit the star. At an eccentricity of 0.00536, the planet's orbit is more circular than that of any of the planets in our solar system. Other authors, while confirming evidence for a fourth planet, challenge the values found, since they use a data set inconsistent with the others. Upsilon Andromedae e Upsilon Andromedae e is the outermost extrasolar planet orbiting the star Upsilon Andromedae A in the constellation of Andromeda. This planet is one of the most Jupiter-like exoplanets found in terms of mass and semi-major axis. This planet was discovered on November 22, 2010, but the discovery"
"orbits in a direction opposite of its star's rotation). Kepler-8b Kepler-8b is the fifth of the first five exoplanets discovered by NASA's Kepler spacecraft, which aims to discover planets in a region of the sky between the constellations Lyra and Cygnus that transit (cross in front of) their host stars. The planet is the hottest of the five. Kepler-8b was the only planet discovered in Kepler-8's orbit, and is larger (though more diffuse) than Jupiter. It orbits its host star every 3.5 days. The planet also demonstrates the Rossiter–McLaughlin effect, where the planet's orbit affects the redshifting of the spectrum"
"the Earth's orbit is currently about 0.0167; the Earth's orbit is nearly circular. Venus and Neptune have even lower eccentricities. Over hundreds of thousands of years, the eccentricity of the Earth's orbit varies from nearly 0.0034 to almost 0.058 as a result of gravitational attractions among the planets (see graph). The table lists the values for all planets and dwarf planets, and selected asteroid, comets and moons. Mercury has the greatest orbital eccentricity of any planet in the Solar System (""e"" = 0.2056). Such eccentricity is sufficient for Mercury to receive twice as much solar irradiation at perihelion compared to"
"spins 642 times per second and, until the discovery of PSR J1748-2446ad in 2005, was identified as the fastest-spinning pulsar. In August 1989, the observatory directly imaged an asteroid for the first time in history: 4769 Castalia. The following year, Polish astronomer Aleksander Wolszczan made the discovery of pulsar PSR B1257+12, which later led him to discover its three orbiting planets. These were the first extrasolar planets discovered. In 1994, John Harmon used the Arecibo Radio Telescope to map the distribution of ice in the polar regions of Mercury. In January 2008, detection of prebiotic molecules methanimine and hydrogen cyanide"
"Venus Venus is the second planet from the Sun, orbiting it every 224.7 Earth days. It has the longest rotation period (243 days) of any planet in the Solar System and rotates in the opposite direction to most other planets (meaning the Sun would rise in the west and set in the east). It does not have any natural satellites. It is named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty. It is the second-brightest natural object in the night sky after the Moon, reaching an apparent magnitude of −4.6 – bright enough to cast shadows at night and, rarely,"
"larger, and Jupiter's is the strongest in the Solar System (so strong in fact that it poses a serious health risk to future manned missions to its moons). The magnetic fields of the other giant planets are roughly similar in strength to that of Earth, but their magnetic moments are significantly larger. The magnetic fields of Uranus and Neptune are strongly tilted relative the rotational axis and displaced from the centre of the planet. In 2004, a team of astronomers in Hawaii observed an extrasolar planet around the star HD 179949, which appeared to be creating a sunspot on the"
"PSR J1748-2446ad ! style=""background-color: #FFFFC0;"" colspan=""2"" | Astrometry PSR J1748-2446ad is the fastest-spinning pulsar known, at 716 Hz, or 716 times per second. This pulsar was discovered by Jason W. T. Hessels of McGill University on November 10, 2004 and confirmed on January 8, 2005. It has been calculated that the neutron star contains slightly less than two times the mass of the Sun, within the typical range of neutron stars. Its radius is constrained to be less than 16 km. At its equator it is spinning at approximately 24% of the speed of light, or over 70,000 km per"
"quickly, although the exact mechanism that causes such speed in this rotation is uncertain, it may be possible that this is caused by tidal interactions between WASP-43 and its planet. With an apparent magnitude of 12.4, WASP-43 cannot be seen with the unaided eye. The star is located approximately 80 parsecs (260 light years) away from Earth. WASP-43b is a Hot Jupiter with a mass that is 1.78 times the mass of Jupiter and a radius that is 0.93 times Jupiter's radius. WASP-43b orbits its host star every 0.813475 days (19.5234 hours) at a distance of 0.0142 AU, the closest"
"on September 1, 2008. Gliese 832 b Gliese 832 b (Gl 832 b or GJ 832 b) is an extrasolar planet located approximately 16 light-years from our sun in the constellation of Grus, orbiting the red dwarf star Gliese 832. The planet takes 3416 days to revolve at an orbital distance of 3.4 AU; this is the longest-period Jupiter-like planet orbiting a red dwarf. The brightness of the faint parent star at that distance corresponds to the brightness of the Sun from 80AU (or a 100 times brighter than a full Moon as seen from Earth). The planet was discovered"
"Sun. It appears to be rotating slowly, with the projected rotational velocity of 2.2 km∙s giving a lower bound to the actual azimuthal velocity along the equator. In November 1999 an exoplanet 23 Librae b was announced orbiting 23 Librae, and in 2009 an additional planet was detected. Examination of the system in the infrared using the Spitzer Space Telescope did not reveal any excess emission, which might otherwise suggest the presence of a circumstellar debris disk of orbiting dust. 23 Librae 23 Librae (23 Lib) is a star in the zodiac constellation Libra, making it visible from most of"
"heights. Venus Venus is the second planet from the Sun, orbiting it every 224.7 Earth days. It has the longest rotation period (243 days) of any planet in the Solar System and rotates in the opposite direction to most other planets (meaning the Sun would rise in the west and set in the east). It does not have any natural satellites. It is named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty. It is the second-brightest natural object in the night sky after the Moon, reaching an apparent magnitude of −4.6 – bright enough to cast shadows at night and,"
"radius and ""T"" is the effective temperature. See: </ref> <ref name=""d"">By the Pythagorean theorem, the net velocity is given by: IK Pegasi IK Pegasi (or HR 8210) is a binary star system in the constellation Pegasus. It is just luminous enough to be seen with the unaided eye, at a distance of about 150 light years from the Solar System. The primary (IK Pegasi A) is an A-type main-sequence star that displays minor pulsations in luminosity. It is categorized as a Delta Scuti variable star and it has a periodic cycle of luminosity variation that repeats itself about 22.9 times"