Planet the Sun: Jupiter is the largest, at 318 Earth masses, whereas Mercury is the smallest, at 0.055 Earth masses. The planets of the Solar System can be divided into categories based on their composition: An exoplanet (extrasolar planet) is a planet outside the Solar System. In early 1992, radio astronomers Aleksander Wolszczan and Dale Frail announced the discovery of two planets orbiting the pulsar PSR 1257+12. This discovery was confirmed, and is generally considered to be the first definitive detection of exoplanets. These pulsar planets are believed to have formed from the unusual remnants of the supernova that produced the
Sun Dutch "zon", Old High German "sunna", modern German "Sonne", Old Norse "sunna", and Gothic "sunnō". All Germanic terms for the Sun stem from Proto-Germanic *"sunnōn". The Latin name for the Sun, "Sol", is used at times as another name for the Sun, but is not commonly used in everyday English. "Sol" is also used by planetary astronomers to refer to the duration of a solar day on another planet, such as Mars. The related word "solar" is the usual adjectival term used for the Sun, in terms such as solar day, solar eclipse, and Solar System. A mean Earth solar