They are often called the gas giant. There are also three dwarf planets : Ceres,Pluto and Eris. They have a total of four moons. Together these objects exist on a plane that is over 10 trillion km in diameter.
The inner and outer planets are separated by the main asteroid belt. The belt lies between Mars and Jupiter and it composed of hundreds of thousands of small rocky bodies. These are often called planetoids.
Beyond the orbit of Neptune is another region called the Kuiper belt. It is a disk-shaped region containing many small icy bodies. Many comets come from this belt. Far beyond the Kuiper belt is another vast cloud of comets called the Oort Cloud.
Planet pathways Ancient peoples observed that the planet changed their positions among the stars. The planet seemed to wander in the sky. The word planet comes from a Greek, word meaning wanderer. Earth is one of the eight planets in the solar system. Like the other planets. Earth moves in a curved path around the sun. This path is the planet's orbit. All of the planets orbit the sun in the same direction.