Discovery and exploration of the Solar System Discovery and exploration of the Solar System Discovery and exploration of the Solar System is observation, visitation, and increase in knowledge and understanding of Earth's "cosmic neighborhood". This includes the Sun, Earth and the Moon, the major planets including Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, their satellites, as well as smaller bodies including comets, asteroids, and dust. For many thousands of years, astronomers maintained a geocentric world view and did not recognize the existence of a Solar System. Most believed Earth was stationary at the center of the Universe and categorically different from the divine or ethereal objects
Jupiter mass outer planets and extrasolar planets. It may also be used to describe the masses of brown dwarfs, as this unit provides a convenient scale for comparison. The current best known value for the mass of Jupiter can be expressed as : which is about as massive than the sun (about ): in scientific notation, Compared to the mass of Earth, Jupiter is 318 times more massive. Jupiter's mass is 2.5 times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined—this is so massive that its barycenter with the Sun lies beyond the Sun's surface at 1.068 solar radii