Attributes of selected minor planets

Some objects are intermediate in size between planets and the lumps of rock called asteroids. These mid-sized objects are now often called 'planetoids' or minor planets: most scientists consider them too small to be "true" planets, while a few scientists point out that these minor planets exhibit the same gravitational forces which affect major planets.

Just one planetoid, Ceres, lies in the inner reaches of the Solar System. All other planetoids occur at the fringe of our planetary system.Other facts
The total surface area of the solar system's objects that have solid surfaces and a diameter greater than 1 km is ~1.7×109 km2 about 11 times the area of the Earth's land masses.

It has been suggested that the Sun may be part of a binary star system, with a distant companion named Nemesis. Nemesis was proposed to explain some timing regularities of the great extinctions of life on Earth. The hypothesis says that Nemesis creates periodical perturbations in the Oort cloud of comets surrounding the solar system, causing a "comet shower". Some of them hit Earth, causing destruction of life. This hypothesis is no longer taken seriously by most scientists.

Edge of the Solar System
The point at which the Solar System ends and interstellar space begins is not precisely defined, since its outer boundaries are delineated by two separate forces: the solar wind and the Sun's gravity.

The charted regions our Solar System exist within a highly tenuous "atmosphere" of solar wind; charged particles eminating from the Sun that expand outward in a great bubble to about 95 AU (three times the orbit of Pluto). The edge of this bubble is known as the termination shock; the point at which the solar wind collides with the opposing winds of the interstellar medium. Here the wind slows, condenses and becomes more turbulent, forming a great oval structure known as the heliosheath that extends outward for a further 40 AU. The outer boundary of the sheath, the heliopause, is the point at which the solar wind finally terminates, and one enters the environment of interstellar space.

But even here, we could not be said to have left the Solar System, for the Sun's gravity will still hold sway even up to the Oort Cloud, the great mass of comets which surrounds our Solar System like a shell and extends from 50,000 to 100,000 AU (nearly a light year) beyond the Sun.

The solar system in small scales
Scaling down the size of the Solar System makes it easier for students to grasp the relative distances. The enormous ratio of interplanetary distances to planetary diameters makes constructing a scale model of the solar system a challenging task. (For example, the distance between the Earth and the Sun is almost 12,000 times the diameter of the Earth.) Several places have built such models.

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