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
Wonders of the Solar System 31 March 2011, the series won the prestigious George Foster Peabody Award for excellence in documentary film-making. The first episode illustrates how the formation and behaviour of the Sun affects each planet in the Solar System. During this episode, Cox visits India to view and explain the workings of a total solar eclipse and the partial eclipses that occur on other planets. He travels to the Iguazu Falls to relate the causality between river levels, and sunspot fluctuations. An explanation of the Earth's exposure to the power of the Sun occurs in Death Valley, California, US, with an experiment inspired