Our Solar System
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- Visualizations by:
- Amy Moran
- View full credits
Our solar system is made up of a star—the Sun—eight planets, 146 moons, a bunch of comets, asteroids and space rocks, ice, and several dwarf planets, such as Pluto. The eight planets are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Mercury is closest to the Sun. Neptune is the farthest.
Planets, asteroids, and comets orbit our Sun. They travel around our Sun in a flattened circle called an ellipse. It takes the Earth one year to go around the Sun. Mercury goes around the Sun in only 88 days. It takes Pluto, the most famous dwarf planet, 248 years to make one trip around the Sun.
Moons orbit planets. Right now, Jupiter has the most named moons—50. Mercury and Venus don't have any moons. Earth has one. It is the brightest object in our night sky. The Sun, of course, is the brightest object in our daytime sky. It lights up the moon, planets, comets, and asteroids.
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Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington (Mercury), USGS Astrogeology Science Center (Venus, Mars), NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Space Telescope Science Institute (Jupiter), NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute (Saturn) and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (Earth, Jupiter, Uranus)
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Animator
- Amy Moran (Global Science and Technology, Inc.) [Lead]
Missions
This visualization is related to the following missions:Related pages
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ID: 3838 Visualization
Incredible Solar Flare, Prominence Eruption and CME Event (304 angstroms)
Read moreOn June 7, 2011, an M-2 flare occurred on the Sun which released a very large coronal mass ejection (CME). Much of the ejected material is much cooler (less than about 80,000K) and therefore appears dark against the brighter solar disk.Material which does not reach solar escape velocity can be seen falling back and striking the solar surface, sometimes triggering smaller events.This image sequence is captured at one minute intervals and designed to play synchronously with animations 3839 (171 Ångstroms), 3840 (211 Ångstroms) and 3841 (1700 Ångstroms). ||
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ID: 12021 Produced Video
Hubble Maps Jupiter in 4k Ultra HD
Read moreNew imagery from the Hubble Space Telescope is revealing details never before seen on Jupiter. Hubble’s new Jupiter maps were used to create this Ultra HD animation.Watch this video on the NASA Explorer YouTube channel. || These new maps and spinning globes of Jupiter were made from observations performed with NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. They are the first products to come from a program to study the solar system’s outer planets – Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune and, later, Saturn – each year using Hubble. The observations are designed to capture a broad range of features, including winds, clouds, storms and atmospheric chemistry. These annual studies will help current and future scientists see how these giant worlds change over time. Scientists at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the University of California at Berkeley produced two global maps of Jupiter from the observations, which were made using Hubble’s high-performance Wide Field Camera 3.The two maps represent nearly back-to-back rotations of the planet, making it possible to determine the speeds of Jupiter’s winds. Already, the images have revealed a rare wave just north of the planet’s equator and a unique filament-like feature in the core of the Great Red Spot that had not been seen previously.In addition, the new images confirm that the Great Red Spot continues to shrink and become more circular, as it has been doing for years. The long axis of this characteristic storm is about 150 miles (240 kilometers) shorter now than it was in 2014. Recently, the storm had been shrinking at a faster-than-usual rate, but the latest change is consistent with the long-term trend. ||
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ID: 30338 Hyperwall Visual
Rotating Mars
Read moreSince our first close-up picture of Mars in 1965, spacecraft voyages to the Red Planet have revealed a world strangely familiar, yet different enough to challenge our perceptions of what makes a planet work. Every time we feel close to understanding Mars, new discoveries send us straight back to the drawing board. Over the past several decades, spacecraft have shown us that Mars is rocky, cold, and desolate beneath its hazy, pink sky. We've discovered that today's Martian wasteland hints at a formerly volatile world where volcanoes once raged and flash floods rushed over the land. Among our many discoveries about Mars, one stands out above all others: the evidence for past surface water on Mars. Water is key because almost everywhere we find water on Earth, we find life. With our robotic spacecraft, we've found evidence that liquid water once flowed in ancient Martian environments that could have supported microbial life. Armed with that knowledge, we now can seek signs of whether such life actually arose. Is there any evidence of life in the planet's past? If so, could any of these tiny living creatures still exist today? Imagine how exciting it would be to answer, "Yes!!" ||
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ID: 11197 Produced Video
Hypercolor Mosaic
Read moreOn March 18, 2011, NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft entered orbit around Mercury, becoming the first spacecraft ever to do so. Among the many instruments on this pioneering probe is a wide-angle camera capable of generating high-resolution images of the planet's surface. By stitching thousands of these images together, scientists created the first complete map of Mercury. The result isn't just a pretty picture. The map's enhanced colors, produced by special filters fitted on the camera, tell a story about the chemical, mineralogical and geological history of the innermost planet in our solar system. Young craters, for example, appear light blue or white. Tan regions mark plains formed by lava flows. Dark blue represents areas rich in a dark mineral. Watch the visualization for a tour of this colorful new view of Mercury. ||
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