WHAT IS THE SMALLEST PLANET AND LARGEST PLANET IN OUR SOLAR SYSTEM?

The smallest planet in our solar system is Mercury, and the largest is Jupiter.

LITTLE PLANET: MERCURY

There are several ways to measure how “big” something is. The first is the mass of the object (how much substance it contains), and the second is its volume (how much space it takes). The smallest planet in mass and volume is Mercury - with a width of 4879 km and 3.3010 x 1023 kg, this tiny world is almost 20 times less massive than the Earth, and its diameter is about 2.5 times smaller. In fact, Mercury is closer in size to our Moon than to Earth. (However, if you're curious, Mercury is still significantly larger than the dwarf planet Pluto: Pluto's equatorial diameter is only 2,302 km, which is about half the width of Mercury.)

LARGEST PLANET: JUPITER

The largest planet in our solar system is Jupiter, which surpasses all other planets in both mass and volume. The mass of Jupiter is more than 300 times the mass of the Earth, and its diameter of 140,000 km is approximately 11 times the diameter of the Earth. (The Great Red Spot of Jupiter, even with its current reduced size, covers 15,900, slightly larger than the total diameter of the Earth.) Jupiter is 2.5 times more massive than other planets in the solar system combined. Despite the large mass, Jupiter has a period of rapid rotation of only 10 hours!