Inferior and superior planets Inferior and superior planets In the Solar System, a planet is said to be inferior or interior with respect to another planet if its orbit lies inside the other planet's orbit around the Sun. In this situation, the latter planet is said to be superior to the former. In the reference frame of the Earth, in which the terms were originally used, the inferior planets are Mercury and Venus, while the superior planets are Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Dwarf planets like Ceres or Pluto and most asteroids are 'superior' in the sense that they almost all orbit outside
Retrograde and prograde motion the side of the Earth facing away from the Sun (i.e. at night) whereas the prograde meteoroids have slower closing speeds and more often land as meteorites and tend to hit the sun-facing side of the Earth. Most meteoroids are prograde. The Sun's motion about the centre of mass of the Solar System is complicated by perturbations from the planets. Every few hundred years this motion switches between prograde and retrograde. Stars and planetary systems tend to be born in star clusters rather than forming in isolation. Protoplanetary disks can collide with or steal material from molecular clouds within the