Planetary system

A planetary system is a set of gravitationally bound non-stellar objects in or out of orbit around a star or star system. Generally speaking, systems with one or more planets constitute a planetary system, although such systems may also consist of bodies such as dwarf planets, asteroids, natural satellites, meteoroids, comets, planetesimals and circumstellar disks. The Sun together with the planets revolving around it, including Earth, is known as the Solar System. The term exoplanetary system is sometimes used in reference to other planetary systems. As of 1 August 2019, there are 4,103 confirmed planets in 3,056 systems, with 665 systems having more than one planet. Debris disks are also known to be common, though other objects are more difficult to observe. Of particular interest to astrobiology is the habitable zone of planetary systems where planets could have surface liquid water, and thus the capacity to harbor Earth-like life. Historically, heliocentrism (the doctrine that the Sun is the centre of the universe) was opposed to geocentrism (placing the Earth at the center of the universe). The notion of a heliocentric Solar System, with the Sun at the center, is possibly first suggested in the Vedic literature of ancient India, which often refer to the Sun as the 'centre of spheres'. Some interpret Aryabhatta's writings in Āryabhaṭīya as implicitly heliocentric. The idea was first proposed in Western philosophy and Greek astronomy as early as the 3rd century BC by Aristarchus of Samos, but received no support from most other ancient astronomers. De revolutionibus orbium coelestium by Nicolaus Copernicus, published in 1543, was the first mathematically predictive heliocentric model of a planetary system. 17th-century successors Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler, and Isaac Newton developed an understanding of physics which led to the gradual acceptance of the idea that the Earth moves round the Sun and that the planets are governed by the same physical laws that governed the Earth. In the 16th century the Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno, an early supporter of the Copernican theory that the Earth and other planets orbit the Sun, put forward the view that the fixed stars are similar to the Sun and are likewise accompanied by planets. He was burned at the stake for his ideas by the Roman Inquisition.