The planets in order from the Sun
The order, with real distances
Why only eight?
Until 2006 most people learned nine, ending in Pluto. That year the International Astronomical Union defined a planet as a body that orbits the Sun, is round under its own gravity, and has cleared its orbital neighbourhood of other objects. Pluto fails the last test — it shares the Kuiper Belt with countless icy bodies — so it was reclassified as a dwarf planet, alongside Ceres, Eris, Makemake and Haumea. The eight true planets divide neatly into four small rocky worlds close in, and four giants far out, split by the asteroid belt.
Numbers can't convey how spread out they are. In the interactive view, switch to 1:1 scale and travel outward — the gap from one planet to the next dwarfs the planets themselves.
Keep going
Every figure on this page is a real, rounded value checked against primary sources. Found something out of date? See how we keep it accurate.