SpaceReading the table
Distance is the average distance from the Sun. A day is the time from one noon to the next. A year is one trip round the Sun, counted in Earth days. Tap a planet's name for all its figures and a comparison with Earth.
Two families
The first four planets, Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars, are small and dense: their densities run from 3,934 to 5,514 kg per cubic metre. The next four, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, are far larger and much less dense, from 687 to 1,638 kg per cubic metre. Saturn's density, 687, is lower than that of water, which is 1000.
In order of size
From largest to smallest by diameter: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Earth, Venus, Mars and Mercury. Jupiter is 11.2 times as wide as Earth. Mercury, the smallest, is 38% of Earth's width.
How the gaps grow
The planets are not evenly spaced. Mars is 228 million km from the Sun, but Jupiter, the next one out, is at 778.5 million km, more than three times as far. Neptune, at 4,515 million km, is about 30 times as far from the Sun as Earth is.
A way to remember the order
Take the first letters, M V E M J S U N, and make a sentence of your own. One that many children use is "My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Noodles".
What about Pluto?
Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006 by the International Astronomical Union, so the list of planets has eight names. Pluto still has a page here, with its figures.
Also on this site: the planets drawn to scale, days and years, distances and light time and moons and rings.