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Bruce Murray Space Image Library

Graph of Planetary Mass Versus Distance From the Sun

Graph of Planetary Mass Versus Distance From the Sun
Graph of Planetary Mass Versus Distance From the Sun This chart compares the masses of the planetary systems that orbit the Sun with their distance from the Sun, as compared to Earth's mass and solar distance. Each system—Earth and its Moon, Saturn and its rings and moons, Pluto and its moons—orbits the Sun as one entity, so planet and satellites are lumped together according to their total system mass rather than being shown as separately orbiting worlds. All objects are shown to scale with each other, though of course the distances separating them are not to scale. For the 8 largest bodies, small black “×” symbols denote the precise location of the mass and distance on the chart grid. Emily Lakdawalla for The Planetary Society using image data from NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI/SwRI/CIW/ISRO/Daniel Chang, processed by Björn Jónsson, Emily Lakdawalla, Daniel Macháček, Mattias Malmer, Alex Parker, Jason Perry, Ted Stryk, and Gordan Ugarkovic

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A black-and-white version with dots rather than planet images is also available.