
Earth is the only planet in the solar system to have one moon. The geoid describes the model shape of Earth, and is used to calculate precise surface locations.Įarth has one natural satellite, the moon. In addition to bulging in the middle, Earth’s poles are slightly flattened. It has a slightly greater radius at the Equator, the imaginary line running horizontally around the middle of the planet. This means it is spherical in shape, but not perfectly round. In contrast, Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system, has a diameter of 143,000 kilometers (88,850 miles), and its mass is about 1,898×1024 kilograms (2093×1021 tons).Įarth is an oblate spheroid. Its diameter is about 12,700 kilometers (7,900 miles), and its mass is about 5.97×1024 kilograms (6.58×1021 tons). The planet Jupiter is about 5.2 AU from the sun-about 778 million kilometers (483.5 million miles).Įarth is the largest and most massive of the rocky inner planets, although it is dwarfed by the gas giants beyond the Asteroid Belt.

This distance, called an astronomical unit (AU), is a standard unit of measurement in astronomy.

It is about 150 million kilometers (about 93 million miles) from the sun. Earth is the planet we live on, one of eight planets in our solar system and the only known place in the universe to support life.Įarth is the third planet from the sun, after Mercury and Venus, and before Mars.
