Our solar system contains the Sun, nine major planets, more than sixty moons and a very large number of small asteroids and comets. The planetary orbits are ellipses. These orbits are all roughly in the same plane. This plane is called the ecliptic and the Earth's orbit is (arbitrarily) used to define it. The ecliptic is not defined by the Sun's equator although they do not deviate by much.

The links on the left lead to images and details of the planets; but to give you some guide to the relative sizes imagine that Pluto was 1 cm in diameter.

On that scale the diameter of the Planets would be	On the SAME scale, the distance from the Sun would be:
Mercury.................2.15 cm Mars.....................2.98 cm Venus...................5.34 cm Earth....................5.62 cm .. and the outer Planets: .......( Pluto....1.00 cm) Neptune................2.01 meters Uranus..................2.07 m Saturn..................5.14 m Jupiter..................6.16 m	Mercury..................256 m Venus.....................478 m Earth......................661 m Mars....................1.007 km .. and the outer Planets: Jupiter.................3.438 km Saturn.................6.305 km Uranus...............12.682 km Neptune.............19.882 km Pluto.................26.126 km