What name is given to the point of a planet’s orbit furthest from the sun?
"diagram on the right illustrates the effects of the eccentricity, showing Mercury's orbit overlaid with a circular orbit having the same semi-major axis. Mercury's higher velocity when it is near perihelion is clear from the greater distance it covers in each 5-day interval. In the diagram the varying distance of Mercury to the Sun is represented by the size of the planet, which is inversely proportional to Mercury's distance from the Sun. This varying distance to the Sun leads to Mercury's surface being flexed by tidal bulges raised by the Sun that are about 17 times stronger than the Moon's"
"2018 VG18 , nicknamed ""Farout"", is a distant trans-Neptunian object. At an observed distance of ~ (more than three times the average distance of Pluto from the Sun, and nearly twice the average distance of Eris), as of December 2018 it is the most distant object in the Solar System ever observed (displacing the previous record holder, Eris, at 96 AU), and the first object discovered beyond , hence the nickname. However, it is not close to being the object with the most distant orbit on average, as its semi-major axis is only estimated to be about 95.2 AU (in"
"an ellipse. A circular orbit is a special case, wherein the foci of the ellipse coincide. The point where the orbiting body is closest to Earth is called the perigee, and is called the periapsis (less properly, ""perifocus"" or ""pericentron"") when the orbit is about a body other than Earth. The point where the satellite is farthest from Earth is called the apogee, apoapsis, or sometimes apifocus or apocentron. A line drawn from periapsis to apoapsis is the line-of-apsides. This is the major axis of the ellipse, the line through its longest part. Bodies following closed orbits repeat their paths"
"Elongation (astronomy) In astronomy, a planet's elongation is the angular separation between the Sun and the planet, with Earth as the reference point. The greatest elongation of a given inferior planet occurs when this planet’s position, in its orbital path around the Sun, is at tangent to the observer on Earth. Since an inferior planet is well within the area of Earth's orbit around the Sun, observation of its elongation should not pose that much a challenge (compared to deep-sky objects, for example). When a planet is at its greatest elongation, it appears farthest from the Sun as viewed from"
"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"
"Proxima Centauri b Proxima Centauri b (also called Proxima b or Alpha Centauri Cb) is an exoplanet orbiting in the habitable zone of the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri, which is the closest star to the Sun and part of a triple star system. It is located about 4.2 light-years (1.3 parsecs, 40 trillion km, or 25 trillion miles) from Earth in the constellation of Centaurus, making it the closest known exoplanet to the Solar System. Proxima Centauri b orbits the star at a distance of roughly with an orbital period of approximately 11.2 Earth days, and has an estimated"
"a moon of another planet from its central planet, for instance the angular distance of Io from Jupiter. Here we can also talk about ""greatest eastern elongation"" and ""greatest western elongation"". In the case of the moons of Uranus, one often talks about ""greatest northern elongation"" and ""greatest southern elongation"" instead, due to the very high inclination of Uranus' axis of rotation.. Elongation (astronomy) In astronomy, a planet's elongation is the angular separation between the Sun and the planet, with Earth as the reference point. The greatest elongation of a given inferior planet occurs when this planet’s position, in its"
"but the specific details of the orbit have not yet been established, JPL's Small-Body Database currently lists the uncertainties of its orbit at greater than 100%. It may take several years of observation to properly characterize the orbit, due to the slow motion of the object. 2018 VG18 , nicknamed ""Farout"", is a distant trans-Neptunian object. At an observed distance of ~ (more than three times the average distance of Pluto from the Sun, and nearly twice the average distance of Eris), as of December 2018 it is the most distant object in the Solar System ever observed (displacing the"
"Extragalactic planet An extragalactic planet, also known as an extragalactic exoplanet, is a star-bound planet, or rogue planet, located outside of the Milky Way galaxy. Due to the huge distances to such worlds, they would be very hard to detect directly. However, indirect evidence suggests that such planets may exist. Nonetheless, the most distant known planets are SWEEPS-11 and SWEEPS-04, located in Sagittarius, approximately 27,710 light-years from the Sun, while the Milky Way is between 100,000–180,000 light years in diameter. This means that even galactic planets located further than that distance have not been detected. A planet with a mass"
"Kuiper belt The Kuiper belt (), occasionally called the Edgeworth–Kuiper belt, is a circumstellar disc in the outer Solar System, extending from the orbit of Neptune (at 30 AU) to approximately 50 AU from the Sun. It is similar to the asteroid belt, but is far larger—20 times as wide and 20 to 200 times as massive. Like the asteroid belt, it consists mainly of small bodies or remnants from when the Solar System formed. While many asteroids are composed primarily of rock and metal, most Kuiper belt objects are composed largely of frozen volatiles (termed ""ices""), such as methane,"
"Lunar orbit In astronomy, lunar orbit (also known as a selenocentric orbit) is the orbit of an object around the Moon. As used in the space program, this refers not to the orbit of the Moon about the Earth, but to orbits by various manned or unmanned spacecraft around the Moon. The altitude at apoapsis (point farthest from the surface) for a lunar orbit is known as apolune, apocynthion, or aposelene, while the periapsis (point closest to the surface) is known as perilune, pericynthion, or periselene, from names or epithets of the moon goddess. Low lunar orbit (LLO)—orbits below altitude—are"
"or within that planet. Owing to mutual gravitational perturbations, the eccentricities of the planetary orbits vary over time. Mercury, the smallest planet in the Solar System, has the most eccentric orbit. At the present epoch, Mars has the next largest eccentricity while the smallest orbital eccentricities are seen with Venus and Neptune. As two objects orbit each other, the periapsis is that point at which the two objects are closest to each other and the apoapsis is that point at which they are the farthest. (More specific terms are used for specific bodies. For example, ""perigee"" and ""apogee"" are the"
"Kepler-20f Kepler-20f (also known by its Kepler Object of Interest designation ""KOI-70.05"") is an exoplanet orbiting the Sun-like star Kepler-20, the second outermost of five such planets discovered by NASA's ""Kepler"" spacecraft. It is located approximately 929 light-years (285 parsecs, or about km) from Earth in the constellation Lyra. The exoplanet was found by using the transit method, in which the dimming effect that a planet causes as it crosses in front of its star is measured. The planet is notable as it has the closest radius to Earth known so far. Kepler-20f is very likely (>95% chance) a rocky"
"(red dot) points of the inner and outer planets. Apsis An apsis (; plural apsides , Greek: ἁψῖδες) is an extreme point in the orbit of an object. The word comes via Latin from Greek and is cognate with ""apse"". For elliptic orbits about a larger body, there are two apsides, named with the prefixes ""peri-"" () and ""ap-""/""apo-"" () added to a reference to the body being orbited. A straight line connecting the periapsis and apoapsis is the ""line of apsides"". This is the major axis of the ellipse, its greatest diameter. The center of mass, or barycenter, of"
"Distant minor planet A distant minor planet, or ""distant object"", is any minor planet found beyond Jupiter in the outer Solar System that is not commonly thought of as an ""asteroid"". The umbrella term is used by IAU's Minor Planet Center (MPC), which is responsible for the identification, designation and orbit computation of these objects. , the MPC maintains 3497 distant objects in its data base. Most distant minor planets are trans-Neptunian objects and centaurs, while relatively few are damocloids, Neptune trojans or Uranus trojans. All distant objects have a semi-major axis (average distance from the Sun) greater than 6"
"course of its year. A body's closest approach to the Sun is called its ""perihelion"", whereas its most distant point from the Sun is called its ""aphelion"". The orbits of the planets are nearly circular, but many comets, asteroids, and Kuiper belt objects follow highly elliptical orbits. The positions of the bodies in the Solar System can be predicted using numerical models. Although the Sun dominates the system by mass, it accounts for only about 2% of the angular momentum. The planets, dominated by Jupiter, account for most of the rest of the angular momentum due to the combination of"
"out to be one of the reddest objects in the Kuiper belt, comparable only to Quaoar, so the nickname was dropped. came to perihelion of 33 AUs around 1857. it is located 87.9 AUs from the Sun and moving away from the Sun at . This makes it the fifth-farthest known large body in the Solar System, after Eris (96.3 AU), V774104 (<96 AU?), (91.4 AU), (89.2 AU), and farther out than (85.7 AU) as of 4 February 2017. It has been farther from the Sun than Sedna since 2013. will be farther than both Sedna and Eris by 2045,"
"approach to the Sun) is estimated to have occurred around September 2010. Aphelion (furthest distance from the Sun) is estimated to have occurred around February 2016. , the asteroid is estimated to be from Earth. Perihelion (closest approach to the Sun) may not occur again until August 2021. Orbits computed with only a handful of observations can be unreliable. Short observation arcs can result in computer generated orbits rejecting some data unnecessarily. The 2018 JPL orbit determination shows a semi-major axis of 4.9 AU (albeit with a large 20 AU uncertainty) which would be near Jupiter's orbit. Such an orbit"
"to as ""volatiles"". The distance from Earth to the Sun is . For comparison, the radius of the Sun is . Thus, the Sun occupies 0.00001% (10 %) of the volume of a sphere with a radius the size of Earth's orbit, whereas Earth's volume is roughly one millionth (10) that of the Sun. Jupiter, the largest planet, is from the Sun and has a radius of , whereas the most distant planet, Neptune, is from the Sun. With a few exceptions, the farther a planet or belt is from the Sun, the larger the distance between its orbit and"
"of its orbit, it is even farther from the Sun than at present, with its aphelion estimated at 937 AU (31 times Neptune's distance), making it one of the most distant-known objects in the Solar System other than long-period comets. Sedna has an exceptionally long and elongated orbit, taking approximately 11,400 years to complete and a distant point of closest approach to the Sun at 76 AU. These facts have led to much speculation about its origin. The Minor Planet Center currently places Sedna in the scattered disc, a group of objects sent into highly elongated orbits by the gravitational"
"the heavens. In Hawaiian, its name is ""Hele‘ekala"", a loanword for the discoverer Herschel. In Māori, its name is ""Whērangi"". Uranus orbits the Sun once every 84 years. Its average distance from the Sun is roughly . The difference between its minimum and maximum distance from the Sun is 1.8 AU, larger than that of any other planet, though not as large as that of dwarf planet Pluto. The intensity of sunlight varies inversely with the square of distance, and so on Uranus (at about 20 times the distance from the Sun compared to Earth) it is about 1/400 the"
"unmapped. There are also ongoing studies of the region between Mercury and the Sun. Objects may yet be discovered in the Solar System's uncharted regions. Currently, the furthest known objects, such as Comet West, have aphelia around 70,000 AU from the Sun, but as the Oort cloud becomes better known, this may change. The Solar System is located in the Milky Way, a barred spiral galaxy with a diameter of about 100,000 light-years containing about 100 billion stars. The Sun resides in one of the Milky Way's outer spiral arms, known as the Orion–Cygnus Arm or Local Spur. The Sun"
"given minimum mass. The planet has one of the longest orbits currently known for an extrasolar planet. The planet's mean distance from the star is close to the distance between Jupiter and the Sun. However, unlike Jupiter it has an eccentric orbit. At periastron the distance between the planet and the star is only 2.51 AU and at apastron the distance is as much as 5.33 AU (compared to the Solar System, distance from the Sun to the inner asteroid belt and from Sun to just beyond the orbit of Jupiter). The signal produced by the planet is very weak"
"nearest from its star is known as its solstice. Each planet has two in the course of its orbit; when one hemisphere has its summer solstice, when its day is longest, the other has its winter solstice, when its day is shortest. The varying amount of light and heat received by each hemisphere creates annual changes in weather patterns for each half of the planet. Jupiter's axial tilt is very small, so its seasonal variation is minimal; Uranus, on the other hand, has an axial tilt so extreme it is virtually on its side, which means that its hemispheres are"
"close as to the Sun at its perihelion and take it as far away as at its aphelion. The aphelion, or farthest point from the Sun, would be in the general direction of the constellation of Taurus, whereas the perihelion, the nearest point to the Sun, would be in the general direction of the southerly areas of Serpens (Caput), Ophiuchus, and Libra. Brown thinks that if Planet Nine is confirmed to exist, a probe could fly by it in as little as 20 years with a powered slingshot around the Sun. The planet is estimated to have 10 times the"
"0.995 AU (or 700,000 km) closer to the star than Earth to the Sun, but its orbital eccentricity is much higher compared to Earth. At periastron, the planet’s closest distance to the star is 0.708 AU, which is slightly closer to the star than Venus to the Sun. At apastron, the planet’s farthest distance to the star is 1.283 AU, which is more than halfway between the orbits of Earth and Mars. 30 Arietis Bb 30 Arietis Bb (sometimes abbreviated 30 Ari Bb) is an extrasolar planet which orbits the F-type main sequence star 30 Arietis B, located in a"
"in the outer Solar System. Located beyond the orbit of Neptune, "" is a non-resonant classical Kuiper belt object (cubewano) of the so-called hot population, which have higher inclinations than those of the cold population. It orbits the Sun at a distance of 40.4–48.5 AU once every 296 years and 2 months (108,178 days; semi-major axis of 44.43 AU). Its orbit has an eccentricity of 0.09 and an inclination of 7° with respect to the ecliptic. The body's observation arc begins at Kitt Peak with its first observation on 18 November 1998. As of 2018, this minor planet has not"
"numbering (where Titania and Oberon are II and IV). In 1851 Lassell eventually numbered all four known satellites in order of their distance from the planet by Roman numerals, and since then Oberon has been designated '. Oberon orbits Uranus at a distance of about 584,000 km, being the farthest from the planet among its five major moons. Oberon's orbit has a small orbital eccentricity and inclination relative to the equator of Uranus. Its orbital period is around 13.5 days, coincident with its rotational period. In other words, Oberon is a synchronous satellite, tidally locked, with one face always pointing"
"orbit is at 30 AU). Its orbit has an eccentricity of 0.58 and an inclination of 8° with respect to the ecliptic. "" is among the most distant known Solar System objects. As of 2018, it is 63 AU from the Sun. It will make its closest approach to the Sun in 2093, when it will reach an apparent magnitude of 21.2. Additional precovery astrometry from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and the Pan-STARRS1 survey shows that """" is a resonant trans-Neptunian object, securely trapped in a 2:9 mean motion resonance with Neptune, meaning that this minor planet orbits the"
"X, Planet Next, or Giant Planet Five."" Planet Nine Planet Nine is a hypothetical planet in the outer region of the Solar System. Its gravity could explain the unlikely clustering of orbits for a group of extreme trans-Neptunian objects (eTNOs) that orbit beyond Neptune with average distances greater than 250 AU. These eTNOs tend to have their points of closest approach to the Sun clustered in one direction, and many of their orbits have a similar tilt. This evidence suggests that the gravity from a large undiscovered object is influencing the orbits of the most distant known Solar System objects."
"It is by far the most distant and eccentric known asteroid orbiting the Sun, varying in its distance from the Sun over its orbit by 99.89% from slightly within the orbit of Jupiter, to more than 7,000 times Earth's distance to the Sun. While its orbit extends to the inner Oort cloud, it may not be a member of it, as it approaches very near to Saturn, implying Saturn has either captured a past Oort Cloud object onto this orbit, or it was a centaur ejected by Saturn from a much smaller orbit. However, it would be impossible to project"
"Neso (moon) Neso ( ; Greek: ""Νησώ""), also known as Neptune XIII, is the outermost known natural satellite of Neptune. It is an irregular moon discovered by Matthew J. Holman, Brett J. Gladman, ""et al."" on August 14, 2002, though it went unnoticed until 2003. Neso orbits Neptune at a distance of more than 48 Gm (million km), making it (as of 2015) the most distant known moon of any planet. At apocenter, the satellite is more than 72 Gm from Neptune. This distance is great enough to exceed Mercury's aphelion, which is approximately 70 Gm from the Sun. Neso"
"AU. This threshold, which is just beyond the orbit of Jupiter (5.2 AU), ensures that the vast majority of ""true asteroids"" – such as the near-Earth, Mars-crosser, main-belt and Jupiter trojan populations – are excluded from the distant minor planets. Distant minor planet A distant minor planet, or ""distant object"", is any minor planet found beyond Jupiter in the outer Solar System that is not commonly thought of as an ""asteroid"". The umbrella term is used by IAU's Minor Planet Center (MPC), which is responsible for the identification, designation and orbit computation of these objects. , the MPC maintains 3497"