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Our Solar System

Our solar system is filled with a wide assortment of celestial bodies - the Sun itself, our eight planets, dwarf planets, and asteroids - and on Earth, life itself! The inner solar system is occasionally visited by comets that loop in from the outer reaches of the solar system on highly elliptical orbits. In the outer reaches of the solar system, we find the Kuiper Belt and the Oort cloud. Still farther out, we eventually reach the limits of the heliosphere, where the outer reaches of the solar system interact with interstellar space. Solar system formation began billions of years ago, when gases and dust began to come together to form the Sun, planets, and other bodies of the solar system.

Neptune's <a href="/neptune/lower_atmosphere.html&edu=high">atmosphere</a> shows
a striped pattern of
<a href="/neptune/atmosphere/N_clouds_overview.html&edu=high">clouds</a>.
This cloud pattern is very similar to that of
<a href="/jupiter/jupiter.html&edu=high">Jupiter</a> and
<a href="/saturn/saturn.html&edu=high">Saturn</a>.
Neptune even has a <a href="/neptune/atmosphere/N_clouds_GDS.html&edu=high">Great Dark
Spot</a> similar
to Jupiter's <a href="/jupiter/atmosphere/J_clouds_GRS.html&edu=high">Great
Red Spot</a>.
The Great Dark Spot of Neptune is thought to be a hole, similar to the hole
in the <a href="/earth/Atmosphere/ozone_layer.html&edu=high">ozone layer on
Earth</a>,
in the <a href="/physical_science/chemistry/methane.html&edu=high">methane</a> cloud
deck of Neptune.<p><small><em>Image courtesy of NASA</em></small></p>

<a href="/asteroids/asteroid_lutetia.html&edu=high">Lutetia</a> is a medium-sized <a href="/our_solar_system/asteroids.html&edu=high">asteroid</a>. It orbits the <a href="/sun/sun.html&edu=high">Sun</a> in the main asteroid belt between the planets <a href="/mars/mars.html&edu=high">Mars</a> and <a href="/jupiter/jupiter.html&edu=high">Jupiter</a>. This lumpy object is about 96 km (60 miles) in diameter. It isn't a perfect sphere, though. Lutetia is 132 km (82 miles) across one way, but only about 76 km (47 miles) long in another direction. The European space probe <a href="/space_missions/robotic/rosetta_flyby_asteroid_lutetia_july_2010.html&edu=high">Rosetta flew past Lutetia</a> in July 2010, and gave us our first good look at the asteroid.<p><small><em>Image courtesy of ESA 2010 MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/RSSD/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA.</em></small></p>

Have you ever seen the <a href="/earth/Magnetosphere/aurora.html&edu=high">Southern or Northern Lights</a>? Earth isn't the only planet that puts on these beautiful light shows, which are also called the "<a href="/earth/Magnetosphere/aurora.html&edu=high">aurora</a>". Aurora have been seen at both <a href="/saturn/saturn_polar_regions.html&edu=high">poles of Saturn</a>, too, as well as at the poles of <a href="/jupiter/magnetosphere/jupiter_aurora.html&edu=high">Jupiter</a>. These "<a href="/earth/Magnetosphere/tour/tour_earth_magnetosphere_09.html&edu=high">curtains of light</a>" sometimes rise 1,200 miles (2,000 km) above the <a href="/saturn/atmosphere/S_clouds_overview.html&edu=high">cloud tops</a> near Saturn's poles. The <a href="/space_missions/HST.html&edu=high">Hubble Space Telescope</a> took this picture in 2004.<p><small><em>Image courtesy of NASA, ESA, J. Clarke (Boston University), and Z. Levay (STScI)</em></small></p>

New observations by the MESSENGER spacecraft provide support for the hypothesis that Mercury harbors abundant water ice and other frozen volatile materials in its permanently shadowed (shown in red) polar craters. Areas where polar deposits of ice imaged by Earth-based radar are shown in yellow.<p><small><em>Image courtesy of NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington/National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center, Arecibo Observatory</em></small></p>

The spinning vortex of <a href="https://www.windows2universe.org/saturn/saturn.html">Saturn</a>'s north polar storm resembles a giant deep red rose surrounded by green foliage in this false-color <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/multimedia/pia14944.html">image</a> from NASA's <a href="https://www.windows2universe.org/missions/cassini.html">Cassini spacecraft</a>. The eye is 2,000 kilometers across with cloud speeds as fast as 150 meters per second.
It is not known how long this newly discovered north-polar <a href="https://www.windows2universe.org/earth/Atmosphere/hurricane/hurricane.html">hurricane</a> has been active.
The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 419,000 kilometers from Saturn.<p><small><em>NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI</em></small></p>

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Explore Our Solar System

Solar System Formation

Solar system formation began billions of years ago, when gases and dust began to come together ...Read more

Sun

The Sun is the closest star to Earth and is the center of our solar system. A giant, spinning ...Read more

Planets

By the current count of astronomers, our solar system includes 8 planets and 5 dwarf planets. ...Read more

Dwarf Planets

In 2006 the International Astronomical Union (IAU) approved a new classification scheme for ...Read more

Asteroids

Asteroids are small bodies that are believed to be left over from the beginning of the solar ...Read more

Meteors, Meteoroids, and Meteorites

Meteors are streaks of light, usually lasting just a few seconds, which people occasionally ...Read more

Comets

Not long ago, many people thought that comets were a portent that something bad was about ...Read more

Poles in Space

The areas around the North and South Poles of planets, moons, and even the Sun are often interesting ...Read more

Culture, Myth, and Arts

Make important cultural connections about the Sun, planets, and the Moon. ...Read more

Solar System Discoveries

Who discovered the planets? For many of the planets in the solar system, we'll never know! ...Read more

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