THE SOLAR SYSTEM

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 planet. Most of the time Pluto is even farther away.

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.

CREDITS: 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), Amy Moran (GST): Lead Animator

Where does the solar system end?

It all depends on the criteria you are using.

Based on where the planets end, you could say it’s Neptune and the Kuiper Belt. If you measure by edge of the sun’s magnetic fields, the end is the heliosphere. If you judge by the stopping point of sun’s gravitational influence, the solar system would end at the Oort Cloud.

CREDITS: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Genna Duberstein (USRA): Lead Producer
Brian Monroe (USRA): Lead Animator
Aaluk Edwardson (InuTeq, LLC): Narrator
Eric Christian Ph.D. (NASA/HQ): Scientist
Music credit: Dream Girl 3 by Yuri Sazonoff

Voyager 1 Trajectory through the Solar System

This visualization tracks the trajectory of the Voyager 1 spacecraft through the solar system. Launched on September 5, 1977, it was one of two spacecraft sent to visit the giant planets of the outer solar system. Voyager 1 flew by Jupiter and Saturn before being directed out of the solar system.

To fit the 40 year history of the mission into a short visualization, the pacing of time accelerates through most of the movie, starting at about 5 days per second at the beginning and speeding up to about 11 months per second after the planet flybys are past.

The termination shock and heliopause are the ‘boundaries’ created when the plasma between the stars interacts with the plasma flowing outward from the Sun. They are represented with simple grid models and oriented so their ‘nose’ is pointed in the direction (Right Ascension = 17h 24m, declination = 17 degrees south) represented by more recent measurements from other missions.

CREDITS: NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio
Tom Bridgman (GST): Lead Animator
Kathalina Tran (KBRwyle): Writer
Genna Duberstein (USRA): Producer
Scott Wiessinger (USRA): Producer
Laurence Schuler (ADNET): Project Support
Ian Jones (ADNET): Project Support

Voyager 2 Trajectory through the Solar System

This visualization tracks the trajectory of the Voyager 2 spacecraft through the solar system. Launched on August 20, 1977, it was one of two spacecraft sent to visit the giant planets of the outer solar system. Like Voyager 1, Voyager 2 flew by Jupiter and Saturn, but the Voyager 2 mission was extended to fly by Uranus and Neptune before being directed out of the solar system.

To fit the 40 year history of the mission into a short visualization, the pacing of time accelerates through most of the movie, starting at about 5 days per second at the beginning and speeding up to about 11 months per second after the planet flybys are past.

The termination shock and heliopause are the ‘boundaries’ created when the plasma between the stars interacts with the plasma flowing outward from the Sun. They are represented with simple grid models and oriented so their ‘nose’ is pointed in the direction (Right Ascension = 17h 24m, declination = 17 degrees south) represented by more recent measurements from other missions.

CREDITS: NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio
Tom Bridgman (GST): Lead Animator
Genna Duberstein (USRA): Producer
Kathalina Tran (KBRwyle): Writer
Scott Wiessinger (USRA): Producer
Laurence Schuler (ADNET): Project Support
Ian Jones (ADNET): Project Support

Voyager 2 Proves Solar System is Squashed

Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 headed on different paths out of the Solar System toward interstellar space. Traveling at different speeds and in different directions, Voyager 1 encountered the termination shock at 94 astronomical units (AU) and Voyager 2 encountered it at only 84 AU. The result, as seen in this combination of an artist’s concept and a researcher’s model, is a somewhat ‘squashed’ picture of the solar system.

As of August 30, 2007, NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft has followed its twin Voyager 1 into the solar system’s final frontier, a vast region at the edge of our solar system where the solar wind runs up against the thin gas between the stars.

CREDITS: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab, Model Data from Opher, et al. 2006
Walt Feimer (HTSI): Lead Animator
Edward C. Stone (California Institute of Technology): Scientist

HEADER IMAGE CREDITS: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab