Fifth planet (hypothetical) Fifth planet (hypothetical) In the history of astronomy, a handful of Solar System bodies have been counted as the fifth planet from the Sun. Under the present definition of a planet, Jupiter is counted as the fifth. There are three main ideas regarding hypothetical planets between Mars and Jupiter. During the early 19th century, as asteroids were discovered, they were considered planets. Jupiter became the sixth planet with the discovery of Ceres in 1801. Soon, three more asteroids, Pallas (1802), Juno (1804), and Vesta (1807) were discovered. They were counted as separate planets, despite the fact that they shared an
Solar System to as "volatiles". The distance from Earth to the Sun is . For comparison, the radius of the Sun is . Thus, the Sun occupies 0.00001% (10 %) of the volume of a sphere with a radius the size of Earth's orbit, whereas Earth's volume is roughly one millionth (10) that of the Sun. Jupiter, the largest planet, is from the Sun and has a radius of , whereas the most distant planet, Neptune, is from the Sun. With a few exceptions, the farther a planet or belt is from the Sun, the larger the distance between its orbit and