5 Coolest Non-Planetary Objects In Our Solar System

Saturn’s Enormous Ring

The one thing everyone thinks of when Saturn is mentioned is its vast array of rings. And while it’s certainly not the only planet with a ring system, they’re definitely the most spectacular example. What we didn’t know until recently is that Saturn’s ring system extends much farther than we first thought.

The ring, made of dust and ice, has eluded discovery for so long because it’s almost invisible, and if you don’t look at it in infrared, it’s easy to miss. Thesheer size of the ring is hard to visualize—it begins 6 million kilometers (3.7 million miles) from Saturn and extends all the way out to 12 million kilometers (7.5 million miles). It’s 20 times as thick as the planet’s height, and Saturn isn’t small. You’d have to use one billion Earths to fill the space the ring takes up.

4The Solar System Limits

As much as we’ve learned about our solar system, there are still simple questions that we just can’t answer. You know, questions like “how large is this thing anyway?” When you were in school, you probably learned that Pluto was the farthest thing from the Sun in our solar system. But then we discovered Eris, the largest known dwarf planet (and the object that made us revoke Pluto’s planethood), twice the distance Pluto is from the Sun. What’s beyond that? The Oort Cloud, a spherical “cloud” of comets near the edge of the Sun’s reach.

And beyond that? Well, in 1977, we launched two deep space probes (Voyager 1 and Voyager 2). They’re still in contact with us 36 years later, and we only just realized that Voyager 1 left the solar system. Simply put, the presence of plasma coming from other stars has indicated that the probe finally made it out, and . . . we don’t know a whole lot more just yet. Now we just need to get as much data as possible before it runs out of power (projected to happen around 2025).

3Hyperion

Hyperion, which looks a lot like a sponge, is the largest moon in the solar system that isn’t spherical. It never rotates quite the same way because Titan, a nearby moon, keeps pulling it in different directions.

Hyperion’s density is just above half the density of water (so it would float, provided a large enough ocean), which is the reason for its spongy appearance; anything that collides with the moon penetrates deeper because of Hyperion’s low density. A spongy moon that floats on water—now we just need to find one that looks like a bar of soap. Oh, we already found one? Good work, NASA.

2Ceres

Ceres (lower-left in the above image) is the only dwarf planet in the “main” part of the solar system. It’s located in the asteroid belt and hogs up all the material in the area (it makes up one-third of all the belt’s matter). Imagine we had the capability to launch the state of Texas into space, and you’ll have a general idea of how large Ceres is, but probably a disproportionate idea of how many guns it has.

Because of the ambiguous definition of “asteroid,” it’s the only dwarf planet in the solar system that is also an asteroid—the largest in the belt. Ceres likely has more water below its surface than all of the fresh water on Earth.

1Space

There are so many awesome things in our solar system that we often forget how empty it really is. They call it “space” for a reason. That’s what it mostly is: empty space. (That’s an image of the Earth and the Moon up there—just look at all that room.)

The Sun itself is 99.8 percent of all the mass in the solar system. Logically, that means that everything else—the enormous gas giants; every asteroid, comet, and meteoroid; and smaller planets like Earth—comprise only 0.2 percent of the matter, most of which is Jupiter.

The Sun itself, which is so large that its volume is 600 times greater than everything in the solar system combined, is less than one-trillionth of a percent of the entire solar system’s volume. There’s so much empty space in our solar system that it’s impossible for the human mind to truly grasp it.