Organization of OUR Solar System

The Solar System we live in does not only contain the 8 planets that we learn in school. This is a good starting point though.  The planets closest to the Sun are considered the part of the Inner Solar System and are comprised of Terrestrial Planets. Of these planets none have rings. As far as moons go, Earth is the first with 1 (Luna) and Mars behind it only has 2 (Phobos and Deimos). The Outer Solar System is the region of our space filled with Icy fragments and gas clouds. The four planets in this region are all Gaseous Planets. All four planets have rings around them, Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune having faint ones confirmed by different space launches. All planets in this region have moons.

A full view of our Solar System is above.  Separating the Inner and Outer areas of our Solar System is an Asteroid Belt between  Mars and Jupiter.  It is called the Main Asteroid Belt and is 1 AU thick (roughly 150 Million Km).  The Most Outer area of our Solar System is past the Kuiper Belt.  The Main Asteroid Belt is filled with "star-like" objects (asteroids) and small planetoids, as well as the Dwarf Planet Ceres.  The Kuiper Belt is filled with icy objects and surrounded by dwarf planets such as Pluto, Haumea, Makemake, and Eris. The Kuiper Belt is 20x the width of the Main Asteroid Belt, and depending on which section is 20-200x thicker. 

Beyond the Kuiper Belt lies the Oort Cloud. The Oort Cloud is a hypothesis (a scientific guess) first theorized (an idea brought to the scientific community, but has yet to be proven) by John Oort.  This is a region of icy objects, and the remains of the materials used to form the Sun and Planets. As the Planets grew, especially Jupiter, its thought that these objects, once much closer to the Sun were pushed out to where they are now.  Facts from Space.com Objects in the Oort Cloud are also referred to as Trans-Neptunian objects. This name also applies to objects in the Kuiper Belt. Some astronomers theorise that the Sun may have captured Oort Cloud cometary material from the outer disks of other stars that were forming in the same nebula as our star. The Oort Cloud is a reserve of cometary nuclei that contain ices dating back to the origin of the solar system. No one knows for sure how many objects exist in the Oort Cloud, but most estimates put it at around 2 trillion. The planetoid Sedna, discovered in 2003, is thought to be a member of the inner Oort Cloud. Astronomers think that long-period comets (those with orbital periods longer than 200 years) have their origins in the Oort Cloud.

So what is between planets? Between us and the Sun? Between the Inner, Outer, and Most Outer Areas of the Solar System?  Interplanetary Medium. What is that? Well, it's alot of stuff. For a long time, we thought this space was filled with NOTHING. But, we were wrong.  The space is filled with something called "tennous gas". That means it is gas made of  neutral and ionized particles, along with small dust grains.  It has an inner and outer boundary. The inner boundary (area) surrounding the sun and its corona. The outer boundary (area) called the Heliopause extending outward toward the planets.    If time allows, and everyone is on task with all the other info we have to go over, we will circle back to this topic in more depth.