The photosphere is the visible surface of the Sun. The Sun appears to have a surface because the gases suddenly become opaque to light, meaning we cannot see further into the interior. The largest observed parallax for a star is almost one second of arc. Planetary orbits are nearly in the same plane. Planetary orbits are all nearly circular.
All planets rotate in the same direction as they revolve.
The first step in the formation of the solar system was the collapse of a rotating interstellar cloud. The largest asteroid, Ceres, has a diameter approximately that of the Earth. Galileo first showed that comets are extraterrestrial. Jupiter's slow rotation causes the polar diameter to be less than the equatorial diameter. Of all the objects in the solar system, Jupiter is most similar to the Sun.