Solar System largely of materials with lower melting points. The boundary in the Solar System beyond which those volatile substances could condense is known as the frost line, and it lies at roughly 5 AU from the Sun. The objects of the inner Solar System are composed mostly of rock, the collective name for compounds with high melting points, such as silicates, iron or nickel, that remained solid under almost all conditions in the protoplanetary nebula. Jupiter and Saturn are composed mainly of gases, the astronomical term for materials with extremely low melting points and high vapour pressure, such as hydrogen, helium,
Solar mass measurement, the solar mass came into use before the AU and the gravitational constant were precisely measured. This is because the relative mass of another planet in the Solar System or the combined mass of two binary stars can be calculated in units of Solar mass directly from the orbital radius and orbital period of the planet or stars using Kepler's third law, provided that orbital radius is measured in astronomical units and orbital period is measured in years. The mass of the Sun has been decreasing since the time it formed. This occurs through two processes in nearly equal